[OSGeo-Standards] TMS and WMTS

[Cameron Shorter]

What were the failings with the development of the OGC Tiling standard?

My understanding is that the OSGeo community collaboratively developed a 
tiling "standard", and then rolled it into Open Source software with 
lightening speed (by OGC terms).
If the OGC were aware of this development, their involvement was 
minimal, probably due to OGC's development cycle which involves floating 
an idea, getting sponsors, going to tender, selecting, implementing, 
rolling into a standard.

Suggested improvement: OGC to be made aware of OSGeo "standards" 
development early, and be invited to participate in OSGeo community 
standards development process.

Suggested improvement: OGC to notify stakeholders of OSGeo "standards" 
development efforts and invite participation.

Later, the OGC initiated a process for the development of tiling 
standards. As far as I'm aware, none of the OSGeo standards development 
participants were involved in the OGC efforts. And further, I don't 
think that the OGC built upon or carried through any information from 
the OSGeo tiling "standard". This led to a significant gap between the 
OSGeo and OGC camps.

Suggested improvement: OGC should actively attempt to build upon defacto 
standards if they exist (this would include Google titling conventions 
as well as OSGeo conventions). This will facilitate increased uptake of 
OGC standards.

Suggested improvement: OGC should actively try to engage key players 
from "defacto standards" in formalising standards.

Open Source projects with no money are often key players in standards 
deployment because they have significant mindshare and uptake. However 
the business model for Open Source puts Open Source at a disadvantage 
when competing against Proprietary projects to work on OGC testbeds.
Open Source implementations of OGC testbeds are handed back to the 
community, so that any future company can use the implementation for 
free. Proprietary projects can sell licences to their projects after 
working on an OGC testbed, and make up R&D looses associated with the 
testbed participation by selling licensed software.

Suggested improvement: The OGC should weight OGC testbed funding to 
favour  Open Source implementations, as the implementations are 
significantly more valuable to OGC sponsors and the greater GIS 
community as the implementations are made available for free.

--

I'm CCing a number of people I'm aware have been involved in the 
development of the tile standards. I expect that they will correct or 
clarify a number of my observations above.

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> TMS and WMS-C pre-date the even the OGC drafts by many months. There
> was no OGC process to speak of, so no synchronization to be had. The
> drafts ended up on the OSGeo wiki because it is easy to get OSGeo
> credentials, really, and many of the drafters were community members.
>
> P
>
> 2010/4/6 Seven (aka Arnulf) <seven at arnulf.us>:
>   
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>>
>> Folks,
>> there is some interest both inside and out of OGC and OSGeo to find out
>> what each of us could have done to better integrate results and findings
>> that lead to the different solutions and standards wrt tiling. (I picked
>> up the thread below from the Spanish OSGeo mailing list).
>>
>> If anybody has an idea, suggestions, comment, complaint or whatever
>> else, feel free to speak up. Maybe we can improve our respective processes.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Arnulf.
>>
>> OLLER GARCIA, Joan Marc wrote:
>>     
>>> Hola a todos,
>>>
>>> con relacion al protocolo de comunicación de datos espaciales basado
>>> en el modelo TMS (Tile Map Service -
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Tile_Map_Service_Specification) aprobado
>>> por la organización OSGeo, me pregunto en que estado de definición se
>>> encuentra por parte de OGC. Asimismo, me pregunto que possibilidad
>>> tiene TMS de conseguir el estatus de estándar OGC.
>>>
>>> Por último, que alternativas en servidores de mapas podrían soportar
>>> internamente en un futuro el modelo TMS?
>>>
>>> Saludos,
>>>
>>> Marc
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ Spanish mailing list
>>> Spanish at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/spanish
>>>       
>> - --
>> Arnulf Christl
>>
>> Exploring Space, Time and Mind
>> http://arnulf.us
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>>     
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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