[OSGeo-Board] questions about OGC membership

[Michael P. Gerlek]

I am starting to think that OSGeo and OGC are serving two different
communities -- except that (1) OGC is only now realizing that there even
IS a second community, and (2) OSGeo wishes that we could all just be
ONE big, happy community. :-)

I also suspect part of the issue here is the now-familiar one about how
"traditional", non-open source organizations have to interact with the
OS community (and vice versa).  We've seen this before, it takes
requires learning and dialog and respect on both sides to sort things
out.

Case in point: in his draft charter for the new OGC working group, Raj
had OSGeo, W3C, and Web3D as the three "standards groups" to work and
interact with -- until it was pointed out that OSGeo isn't actually
standards body...  And yet, OSGeo DOES have fingerprints all over the
WMS-Tile spec...  A bit of cognitive dissonance there.

Anyway, a little dialog goes a long ways.  Would be good to have a few
of "us" sit down for an afternoon with a few of "them" at some point and
discuss what our different goals are and where we can help each other.


Also-

Ed Parsons blogged about this issue: http://www.edparsons.com/?p=392.

Raj set up a mailing list for the Mass Market group, which I think he
intended to be open to all and sundry:
https://mail.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/mass-market-geo.


-mpg, sitting nervously on both sides of this debate




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jo Walsh [mailto:jo at frot.org] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 3:06 AM
> To: Arnulf Christl
> Cc: board at board.osgeo.org; Michael P. Gerlek
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Board] questions about OGC membership
> 
> On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 02:54:34AM +0100, Arnulf Christl wrote:
> > I do not think that OSGeo actually can be a member of OGC. 
> It would look
> > like the Southern Hemisphere joining the European Union. 
> Huh? Exactly.
> :)
>  
> > It has been suggested that individual OSGeo developers 
> (contributors to
> > OSGeo related projects including Edu and Data) could become 
> member status
> > of the OGC without direct cost (cash) to be able to join technical
> > committee meetings, vote etc. We need to work out what 
> OSGeo can provide
> > in turn. Suggestions?
> 
> Um, so OSGeo developers already struggling to find spare time to put
> into projects in which there's a lot of interest (the open source geo
> book, the geodata repository) can give their time to the OGC, and then
> the Foundation *owes* the OGC for that? This makes no sense to me.
> Unless what is given is something that is anyway being made, or really
> is visible strong benefit to the open source geospatial community.
>   
> > I will present OSGeo to the OGC Planning Committee on 
> Friday with a set of
> > slides.
> 
> Good for you, best of luck! 
> 
> > ((current discussion on simplified WFS lost itself in 
> whether there is a
> > need for WFS profiles))
> 
> It has always been a problem for me that OGC's culture seems so
> inward-looking - that there are so many interlocking assumptions
> needed to engage with their specifications. One has to be bought into
> the worldview completely, working at least half time on 
> keeping up with it. 
> 
> On a personal basis I was driven crazy by Simple because i sunk a fair
> amount of time into it, by the time i left i was being told privately
> that I had no right to participate without a full understanding of the
> abstract model and several ISO specifications. Goodness knows it took
> less time to implement Simple than it does to read an OGC 
> specification. 
> 
> > if you want to give me some directions or advice please 
> holler at me.
> 
> On an on-message presentation of OSGeo to OGC? On what kind 
> of stance on 
> a "special relationship" to adopt? 
> 
> I have emphasised that OSGeo community has been stresstesting what
> happens to OGC Web Services when they really get out into wider use
> and producing augmentations - TMS, or the versioning extensions that
> geoserver are doing for WFS-T - if standards are more respectable when
> they have several implementations, they are even more so when the
> edges are stressed by broad usage. And focusing on lowering 
> the bar for
> non-expert users, making interfaces (both machine and human) simpler 
> (GeoRSS support, hotbed of AJAX client collaboration). I remember that
> Jody had some pragmatic things to say about the OSGeo-OGC connection:
> http://weblogs.java.net/blog/jive/archive/2006/11/wms_tiling_or_w.html
> 
> "Interoperability" is a strange word, almost an anachronism - how can
> one not be interoperable. I kind of prefer "interoptability", 
> suggesting 
> that everyone can see more of what everyone else is thinking...   
> 
> Er, I need coffee and so on, and you know my history of cynicism and 
> mutual ridicule re. the OGC and I am probably the most 
> detached from its
> affairs of anyone here. I think OSGeo is basically doing well as it
> is, that one could sink a lot of time into this through wanting to
> help and not getting far, and a 'strategic ambiguity' for a while
> longer might not be such a bad thing...
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> jo
> 
>