I was recently reading a post by Gordon Luckett about how he’s been able to use Google Maps and Bing layers in MapGuide / Fusion maps. This is only possible because the Fusion project decided to build on top of OpenLayers, and recent builds of Fusion have enabled the OpenLayers commercial base maps.
This got me to thinking about the amount of work that the MapGuide project is leveraging every time you see a map. MapGuide directly includes about a dozen open source libraries. Many of these (such as FDO, GDAL, GD and Fusion) have their own stack of libraries that they depend on. With a bit of digging, I quickly ended up over 30–I’m sure I could have gone further–and this doesn’t even count the open source utilities such as GCC, Ant and SWIG that are integral to turning all of this code into something you can use.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter how cool your code is, you’re really just the tip of the iceberg. We’re not standing on the shoulders of giants, we’re standing on the shoulders of thousands of regular people who have dedicated their time to help build this ecosystem. We have to make sure that we in turn enhance other projects where possible, and provide a solid base for those who come to build on our work in the future.
-J
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