Heatmap for Google Maps

Today I rolled out a heatmap for our embedded Google Map. Now I find FortiusOne doing the same via their GeoCommons social network and GeoIQ web service.

GeoIQ uses a straight GOverlay, and I'm impressed at their performance, since they basically have to generate every single image every single time. I tried GOverlay, but opted for GTileLayerOverlay. This means I serve my heatmap in 256 x 256 chunks. I generate a tile when it is actually requested, except for certain popular/expensive tiles, which I pre-generate. However, I only regenerate a tile when the data for that tile changes; otherwise it is served straight from the filesystem.

Since FortiusOne has already staked out the commercial space (I'm guessing their business model revolves around consulting and licensing for non-public/non-free implementations), perhaps I'll open-source my implementation. It would make a good show-piece for Aspen. However, FortiusOne are clearly domain experts, and their (Rails-based) service is much further along. So does the world want an open-source, Python-based heatmapper? And moreover, do I want to support it?