The recent email news that the "ESRI Geoportal Extension will become open source under one of the Creative Commons open source license," is raising questions like "What does this mean for us?" My response has been that this is generally positive (and in part that the Geoportal is the perfect product to be open-source)! My-2-cents: the Geoportal has evolved from the GIS Portal Toolkit, to a fully supported EXTENSION with a full maintenance program (which includes support)! We have been on-board testing and implementing this product ever since version 9.3.1, to 9.3.1.sp1, and soon to version 10! The product is maturing and will be even better in 10! It appears some items that were code-sample customizations will be more out-of-the-box functionality, and the documentation was good before, but is even better.
I don't think this announcement points to anything ominous in our future, but just the opposite! The Geoportal was always very configurable to a large extent in regard to authentication, choices in database, metadata standards, and agency look & feel. The Catalog Search for the Web (CSW) client, and the Publishing Client were already open source, and the Geoportal code files were already easily accessible and exposed for configuration.
This is all very encouraging that the technology will continue to be compatible with Sharepoint, and work well with which ever API's suits the need, like Flex, Silverlight, or JavaScript. So sounds like nothing terribly earth-shaking here, but exciting and flexible to meet growing needs. Is there anything I'm missing in this announcement that should be communicated to managers regarding changes in licensing or anything else? I'm assuming it's still going to be an ESRI ArcGIS Server extension product?
