[OSGeo-Discuss] GFOSS related tutorials on handling File Formats in GLCF's web-page

[Nikos Alexandris]

Nikos Alexandris wrote:

[..]

> I miss to see GFOSS-related tutorials (like GDAL, GRASS-GIS and, of course,
> much more).  I've mailed them directly and asked if they will accept user-
> submitted material. Will post here their reply.

[..]


2nd request (and 2nd reply below)

--%<---
From: nik at nikosalexandris.net [mailto:nik at nikosalexandris.net] 
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 6:15 PM
To: glcfreq
Subject: Re: Adding tutorials on handling various File Formats with Geospatial 
Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) (GLCF #128136)

Kathrine Maria Collins wrote:

> Hello,

Hello Mrs. Collins,

> Thank you for your offer, but we are not allowed or equipped to 
> distribute user-supplied material.

Thanks for your feedback.

Would you mind feeding-me-back with even more (concrete) answers?  My 
curiosity is not satisfied on whether there is any intention/interest, from 
GLCF's side, to demonstrate data handling using Free & Open Source Geospatial 
Applications?

Currently, only proprietary tools are supported.  This is, admittedly, strange 
to me, as there are so many fine piece of software packages out there that'll 
do the job, even better in various occasions.

In addition, the GLCF general tendency and policy

( quoting from <http://www.landcover.org/data/policy.shtml>, Mission Policies:

"The distribution policy of the GLCF is to provide imagery and products for 
free whenever possible. The purpose of this policy is to enable as much use of 
quality Earth science datasets as possible. The only request in return is that 
the user acknowledge the GLCF as source of the dataset in any publication or 
presentation." )

is more compatible to the licensing spirit of OSGeo stuff[1][2], rather than to 
proprietary products.

For Data and Tools, or, for Tools and Data, there many reasons to be 
distributed freely, as much as possible. 

Is there any way to change the current status and have some Tutorials on using 
OSGeo tools?

I would like to share my questions and your feedback, if and whenever you have 
the time to reply, with the OSGeo-Discuss public mailing list [3].

> Don't forget to show your support for us on Facebook by clicking
> here<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Land-Cover-Facility/1859862
> 11412
> 421>.

Apologies, I can't support that since I have no Facebook account.

Please, I am asking from GLCF to show its support to the OSGeo community, 
which uses its products and creates Great works 

Many thanks for your attention, Nikos
---

[1] <http://www.osgeo.org/>
[2] <http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html>
[3] <http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss>,
<http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/>
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2nd reply

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From:	Saurabh Channan <schannan at umd.edu>
To:	glcf <glcf at reflectors.mail.umd.edu>, "nik at nikosalexandris.net" 
<nik at nikosalexandris.net>, glcfreq <glcfreq at reflectors.mail.umd.edu>
Date:	Yesterday 23:29:56

Dear Nikos,

        We are very much for the open geospatial and or source community, I 
hope this satisfies your curiosity on GLCF stand on OSGEO in general.  When we 
started off back in the late 90's, the whole idea for providing unrestricted 
access to remotely sensed data and products was in hopes to build a more open 
GIS/RS community so that we could all build tool, applications, better 
algorithms, higher level products, visualization tools, etc.; essentially help 
develop an industry that uses remotely sensed data and GIS.  

        The FAQ's and most of the content that you see on our website is a 
function of questions/queries we get about our website and the data that we 
distribute from our users.   Most of the questions we got early on (early 
2000) was from the commercial community as to how to use the data in the 
software packages that they were aware off, and we did so by writing up the 
FAQ.  Currently, we get little or more like no queries from the open source 
community, and our guess is because there is already a plethora of information 
online  on how to use remotely sensed data, for example gdal with a geotiff file 
format.    The awareness about the data and the software products that go 
along with it is improved tremendously over the years,  and now it almost 
feels redundant to have yet another document/write up on our website about it.  
Here is an example which I just found by googling 
http://toroid.org/ams/landsat-and-grass.   There are tons of sites like the 
one I just listed on how to use data in general and more specifically how to 
use data downloaded from our site. 

        We get a lot of requests from developers commercial and non-commercial 
sector about hosting or linking to their website, and that is why Katie used 
our standard response.   However, if you still strongly feel that we should 
host a tutorial on how to use gdal, etc., in the sincere spirit of GLCF 
supporting OSGEO goals [2], I will be happy to either link or host a document 
written by OSGEO.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Best,

Saurabh


Saurabh Channan | Project Manager  | Global Land Cover Facility | 4321 
Hartwick Building, College Park, MD 20740
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