[Geodata] Geodata Mission

Mon Nov 19 11:37:29 EST 2007

Christopher wrote: "So we built http://data.freemap.in/ -- which, so far
as I'm aware, had no serious complaints against it. It's been there for
Many Months -- and no one has used it, or organized around it,
presumably because it is not as feature-filled as GeoNetwork or
something."

I was unaware of this portal. I think it is a great idea.

Christopher wrote: "There are hundreds of
datasets out there -- disparate, hard to find, managed by agencies who
love to publish data but haven't the time to market it. OSGeo could take
the position of sheparding this data into the public eye, but so far
this route hasn't been taken."

I think this is an admirable goal. Even if OSGeo members simply worked
on publishing and/or cataloging publicly available data that they used
in their own work, this would be a start.

Christopher wrote: " So, what does the OSGeo Geodata committee want to
do? Build tools for managing data? Help promote data? Help figure out
the legal issues
around data? I think that the resources -- computational -- have been
there to do any of these for months, and we haven't pursued them. I
think that the software for managing these efforst has been around for
months as well -- and there has not been a serious effort towards
managing data or anything else along those lines, nor has there been (in
my opinion) a serious 'call to data holders' to share their data via
OSGeo."

You have outlined some great ideas, and indicated that a lot of the
resources we need to accomplish some of these tasks are already
available. I know I would be personally interested in:

[1] Resolving questions about geo-data licensing.
[2] Advocating and coordinating the release of public geospatial data.

I think I might be able to coordinate some of this activity with my
efforts to get a California chapter of the OSGeo up and running. Members
interested in the Chapter could use the website you set up to catalog
sources of geospatial data in California. I'd also like to get some
geo-data licensing issues resolved and put together a letter to the
Southwestern Region of the United States Forest Service about releasing
their data in a format that is a little more open than ESRI's Personal
Geodatabase.

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:geodata-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Christopher
Schmidt
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 5:05 AM
To: Jo Walsh
Cc: geodata at lists.osgeo.org; bitner at gyttja.org
Subject: Re: [Geodata] Geodata Mission

On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 03:59:58AM -0800, Jo Walsh wrote:
> The few people who have done *a lot* on the systems at telascience -
> crschmidt, MartinSpott - are scratching their own itches. Well, no-one
> scratches other people's itches for free. Would money even help, given
> we know we're building something to give away? 

Speaking for myself, money wouldn't change the situation any. Until
there's a clear goal of what OSGeo and the Geodata committe *want* to
do, then how can anyone get something done?

There was an argument of 'no data before metadata'. Cool, we can deal
with that. So we built http://data.freemap.in/ -- which, so far as I'm
aware, had no serious complaints against it. It's been there for Many
Months -- and no one has used it, or organized around it, presumably
because it is not as feature-filled as GeoNetwork or something.

But why does it need to be Feature-filled? There are hundreds of
datasets out there -- disparate, hard to find, managed by agencies who
love to publish data but haven't the time to market it. OSGeo could take
the position of sheparding this data into the public eye, but so far
this route hasn't been taken.

Perhaps this is because we don't want to be mere shepards of data: we
want to use the tremendous resources offered by TelaScience to find the
hosting that others can't find for themselves... but I've not yet found
a target to which that really applies. With the exception of NASA data
-- remote sensed satellite data, gigabytes a day -- there aren't a lot
of people who have geodata that they mind hosting themselves. Vector
data especially tends to pack pretty well: A couple sizable MrSIDs will
take significantly more space than all the vector data a state might
have.

So, most people who have data don't need hosting. (Not all, but I
haven't identified any for whom this isn't true yet.) Instead, it's
possible that they need their data provided as services -- WMS, WFS,
etc.?

Problem with this is that standing up a usable WMS server for data is
*hard* -- it's much easier to download the data and use it yourself.
With the exception of tools like OpenLayers (which is in the tiny
minority of applications used for GIS 'work'), which don't have a
shapefile reader, it's way easier to just download a shapefile and drop
it into qgis or something similar than to use a WMS that may not be
styled like you want to, or a WFS that you likely don't have a client
for.

So perhaps instead the geodata committee should take a lead on data
licensing. Except... all the licensing questions are totally up in the
air, jurisdictional in nature (solving the question for US-based
companies doesn't help OpenStreetMap and vice versa) and, most
importantly, untested by law: so even the most experienced intellectual
property lawyer is only going to be able to give you a 'best guess'
combined with a promise to be on your side in a court battle when it
happens. (I know this mostly because I *have* done this, and gotten
exactly that answer: "Here's our best guess, but there's no case law, so
there's no real way of knowing until there is.") Perhaps with enough
money, we could find a lawyer willing and suitably confident in their
field to offer legal advice for the community... but money doesn't grow
on trees.

There are a couple of efforts out there in putting together globally
reusable data projects. OpenStreetMap is the big one -- but has always
had a decidedly anti-OSGeo streak (unfortunately, in my opinion).
Lately, I've taken to helping them out using OSGeo/TelaScience 
resources *anyway*, but if I mentioned that the server was hosted by
OSGeo, I wouldn't be surprised to see a significant pushback against
using the resources. It wouldn't be the first time I've felt that to be
the case (even if it isn't provably true). 

So, what does the OSGeo Geodata committee want to do? Build tools for
managing data? Help promote data? Help figure out the legal issues
around data? I think that the resources -- computational -- have been
there to do any of these for months, and we haven't pursued them. I
think that the software for managing these efforst has been around for
months as well -- and there has not been a serious effort towards
managing data or anything else along those lines, nor has there been (in
my opinion) a serious 'call to data holders' to share their data via
OSGeo.

I'm assuming that at least some of these things are within the goals of
some members of the committee, but I have no idea which ones, or how we
want to proceed -- and until I do, I have no idea how to act within the
goals of the committee, or if I'm acting directly in counter to it.
Without that, the things that I've done are just toys, because without a
group (hivemind) behind them, they're just my projects, and not those of
OSGeo.

I look forward to a day when this sitaution will change, and look
forward to hearing from others how they want to help move open data
efforts forward.

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer
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