[Board] OGC Relationship

[Gary Lang]

"I'm not sure what we would offer OGC in return.  I suspect ultimately
what would be most valuable to them is some sort of commitment to not
become a a "standards development" organization.  This avoids
duplication, confusion in the marketplace, and what they might consider
competition."

>From talking with David, I think is exactly what we would usefully
offer, and for two reasons:

a) we're not in the standards business. It's not in our top priorities,
last I looked
b) exactly what you said - "avoids duplication, confusion in the
marketplace"

If a) is true, then providing comfort and clarity around b) seems a
no-brainer.

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam
(External)
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:03 AM
To: board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Board] OGC Relationship

Folks,

I'm taking the liberty of moving (at least part) of this discussion to
the public board list.

I am favorable on the idea of a formal liason relationship with OGC
though I don't consider it particularly critical to us or them since
there is already extensive cross membership and cross pollination.

If we are to have a formal liason relationship, one benefit I would like
to see is the ability for us give some developers access to working OGC
documents, and for those developers to be involved in OGC testbeds, and
working groups as OSGeo representatives.  I believe the OGC portal
allows members to setup accounts for individuals to access the portal.
We could manage a list of developers-with-access via this mechanism,
with the understanding that we would never have more than some fixed
number of developers (or users really) so authorized.  I think even
doing this for 5-10 would be plenty since most OSGeo project folks with
an interest in OGC work already have access through corporate
memberships.

I'm not sure what we would offer OGC in return.  I suspect ultimately
what would be most valuable to them is some sort of commitment to not
become a a "standards development" organization.  This avoids
duplication, confusion in the marketplace, and what they might consider
competition.

I'd be agreeable with this, but it must be understood that
self-organizing working groups within and between OSGeo projects are
likely to develop specifications such as GeoRSS, or the web tile
specification whether we encourage it or not, and I don't want to be in
the position of discouraging
that.  So we must be careful that such activities are not precluded.
At
most I think the board could offer to not develop and support our own
standards development process - understanding that we won't supress it
either.

The other angle might be some sort of more active involvement of OSGeo
projects in OGC testbeds and other IE efforts.  However, it is hard for
us to force project involvement.  It might be appropriate for the
foundation to provide some modest supporting funding for project
involvement in OGC testbeds and interoperability experiments.  For
instance, providing travel funding.

Note that there are at least a few people who would like to see OSGeo
become a sort of light weight agile standards development organization.
I'm not keen on that, but it might be prudent to give these folks a
chance to make their case.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo,
http://osgeo.org

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