[knz]

> This is an unusual situation; many people need geospatial databases, and contributing their local data is useful to them. The value here is in the data, not the code.

I disagree. Every organisation with geospatial data needs these types of applications and tools like GeoNode are viable alternatives for organisations that are invested in FOSS GIS or that can't afford ESRI.

I've worked in GIS at national, state, and local level government and have fought the same battles to bring open source GIS tools into the enterprise at every level - IT leadership are almost always enamoured with COTS products (i.e. ESRI) and resist the FOSS approach of having to assemble something equivalent to ArcServer/ArcPortal etc. Having solutions like GeoNode allow FOSS to actually compete with ESRI when the decision is being made by IT leadership who know nothing about GIS and are impressed by "solutions".