<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Hello,</span><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">thank you all (and especially the board) for taking time to work on this.</div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">Getting the issue into the media will take more effort than usual a</span>s mentioned in a discussion on the OSGeo board [1]. The IT portal "heise group" in Germany picked it up [2,3] after a German "open format" fan wrote a personal email to the editor about the story. Similarly the attention of other media [4,5] was awakened with personal effort (after the story had already broken on blogs, in mailing lists, and the German site).</div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">[1] <a href="http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-April/012720.html" target="_blank">http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-April/012720.html</a></span><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><div>[2] <a href="http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html" target="_blank">http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html</a></div><div>[3] <a href="http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lidar-Format-War-Geo-Softwarehaus-Esri-vs-Geo-Community-2615341.html" target="_blank">http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lidar-Format-War-Geo-Softwarehaus-Esri-vs-Geo-Community-2615341.html</a></div><div>[4] <a href="http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-lidar-lock-in-plans.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-lidar-lock-in-plans.aspx</a></div><div>[5] <a href="http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/" target="_blank">http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/</a></div></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">But it will be hard to get wide geospatial media coverage. There seems to be an incredible hesitation to publish anything negative about a particular vendor no matter how "hot" the topic. The geospatial media outlets are well aware of the story but literally "refuse" to cover it.</span></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">This seems especially evident for "LiDAR news" - the most obvious place for this story to run - who blogged about every tiny little advance [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] of "Optimized LAS" or "zLAS" (aka the "LAZ clone") but did not run a single headline on the screaming controversy. If I were to approach this editor I think my request will be ignored or denied. </div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br>[1] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-the-las-optimizer" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-the-las-optimizer</a><div>[2] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/faq-on-esri-las-optimizer" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/faq-on-esri-las-optimizer</a></div><div>[3] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/early-positive-reviews-for-esri-las-optimizer" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/early-positive-reviews-for-esri-las-optimizer</a></div><div>[4] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated-to-include-parallel-decompression" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated-to-include-parallel-decompression</a></div><div>[5] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated</a></div><div>[6] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-beta-program-for-optimized-las" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-beta-program-for-optimized-las</a></div><div>[7] <a href="http://blog.lidarnews.com/esris-zlas-io-library-now-available" target="_blank">http://blog.lidarnews.com/esris-zlas-io-library-now-available</a></div><div><br></div><div>There are some interesting thoughts by Adena Schutzberg who worked for a number of GIS publications. She picked up the story in her private blog [1] and added some tips on how to approach geospatial media outlets to get them to run a story. I have beem "too outspoken" on the issue to do this myself but getting media coverage is the next step.</div><div><br></div><div>Volunteers?</div><div><br></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">[1] <a href="http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html" target="_blank">http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html</a><br></div></div><div><br></div><div>Regards and Thanks for your help in "keeping LiDAR open".</div><div><br></div><div>Martin @rapidlasso</div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Martin Isenburg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:martin.isenburg@gmail.com" target="_blank">martin.isenburg@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><p dir="ltr">Michael talks about this tool:</p>
<p dir="ltr">The newest product of rapidlasso is an open source tool aiming to liberate LiDAR points locked-up in proprietary “Optimized LAS”, a highly controversial, closed format with a *.zlas file extension. The new LASliberator comes as both, a DOS command line tool for scripting and with an easy-to-use graphical interface ...</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://rapidlasso.com/2015/04/20/new-lasliberator-frees-lidar-from-closed-format/" target="_blank">http://rapidlasso.com/2015/04/20/new-lasliberator-frees-lidar-from-closed-format/</a></p><span class=""><font color="#888888">
<p dir="ltr">Martin</p></font></span><div class=""><div class="h5">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Apr 20, 2015 9:54 AM, "Michael Gerlek" <<a href="mailto:mpg@flaxen.com" target="_blank">mpg@flaxen.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">After some of us raised concerns about ESRI’s announcement, they clarified that their intended position was as Martin describes.<div><br></div><div>They clearly didn’t (don’t?) understand the *intent* of the Apache license and the term “open source". While perfectly legal, it was (and is) very misleading of them to use the term “open source” anywhere in that repo…</div><div><br></div><div>aside: They also say in that repo that “it’s easy and free to convert between standard LAS and zLAS”. Until Martin’s new tool came out today, I don’t believe that conversion could possibly be considered either "free" or "easy” :-(<br><div><div><br><div><div>-mpg</div></div></div></div></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Apr 18, 2015, at 9:25 PM, Martin Isenburg <<a href="mailto:martin.isenburg@gmail.com" target="_blank">martin.isenburg@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div dir="ltr">Hello,<div><br></div><div>ESRI's github repository<span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"> contain *no* source code, except a sample *.cpp file to show how to use their (Windows-only) binary dll and/or lib files. This is *not* open source in any sense of the word but an </span><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">unusal of the Apache license. Below I quote someone whom I've dicussed this with:</span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></span></div><div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"><div>It is allowed to use Apache License for binary-only software, but that is extremely rare that anyone does that, because it goes against the whole idea of "Open Source". It is only possible because Apache License is a so-called "permissive" license, whereas GPL, CDDL and other "copyleft" licenses will not allow such "source-less Open Source" non-sense:<br><br>See this section of the FAQ on the OSI site (Open Source Initiative):<br><a href="http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution" target="_blank">http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution</a><br><br></div>Also this Apache Foundation FAQ:<br><a href="http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#WhatDoesItMEAN" target="_blank">http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#WhatDoesItMEAN</a><br></div><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">"[the Apache license] </span><strong style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">does not require</strong><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"> you to include the source of the [..] software itself"</span></div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Regards,</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Martin @rapidlasso</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Cameron Shorter <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cameron.shorter@gmail.com" target="_blank">cameron.shorter@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Hi Martin,<br>
Esri's reference below: <span style="font-family:Cambria,serif"><a href="https://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">https://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library</span></a>
states that </span>the esri-zlas-io-library read/writes Optimized
LAS, and is also Open Source, under the Apache license.<br>
<br>
Does this mean that it is possible to reverse engineer the Optimized
LAS format?<br>
Would this open the possibility to integrate LASzip and Optimized
LAS?<br>
Thoughts?<br>
<br>
Regards Cameron.<br>
</div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div>