[MetaCRS] "FOSS Maintained" Source of CRS Definitions

[Howard Butler]

On May 7, 2008, at 8:01 AM, Mike Adair wrote:

> I'm thinking we should approach Chris Schmidt/Howard Butler about  
> their http://spatialreference.org site for this.  This provides a  
> RESTful service for looking up the definitions, returns the  
> definitions in various formats, includes the EPSG database and  
> allows for user-uploaded definitions too.  Proj4js uses this service  
> for run-time lookup of the definitions.
>
> I know that OSGeo is not about running operational services like  
> this, we could ensure continued operation of that service.

I can't speak for Chris, but I would like to see http://spatialreference.org 
  play a part of the MetaCRS effort.  I currently host this on my own  
server, but if availability were to become an issue, or I wouldn't  
have any more time to keep it alive, or MetaCRS would like to use it  
as a centerpiece, I would transfer it to OSGeo (I have stated this  
before in a couple of forums, I believe).  We could then find  
resources to keep its heart beating.

I think something like http://spatialreference.org can play a key role  
in MetaCRS's problem of common dictionary creation and maintenance.   
In my mind, common dictionaries is the juiciest problem MetaCRS can  
tackle, and sr.org is one of a multi-pronged approach at tackling it.

On May 7, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Landon Blake wrote:
> Your idea about contacting the maintainers of the site is an  
> interesting
> one. One question I had when I was browsing the site was how they
> controlled user submission of CRS definitions. I saw a lot of these
> definitions with the name "test". :]


We don't control user submissions other than to remove obvious spam  
(we've gotten a little in the past, but it hasn't been too bad).  What  
really matters for a user submission is the URL that submission ends  
up generating, not the name.

Howard