[OSGeo-Board] questions about OGC membership

[Chris Holmes]

Jo Walsh wrote:
> 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.

What is given is real world feedback on the specs.  This is _huge_ for 
the OGC, and what they really want more than anything.  I've talked to 
Raj a good bit about this, and OGC definitely would like more 
involvement from the open source community.  The pre-requisite is access 
to their private documents.  They don't want to fully open this up to 
everyone, since it's one of the benefits of being members.  But it'd be 
great for all if there was an easier way for open source developers to 
get access, possibly through OSGeo.  We kicked around the idea of having 
a 'standards committee' within OSGeo, and perhaps people in that 
committee could get access to OGC private documents.


>   
>> 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. 


Yeah, it's tough, because working with OGC definitely takes a good bit 
of time.  I just submitted my first 'corrigendum' to fix one of their 
schemas yesterday, and definitely took half a day to format everything.

And there's a lot of people in OGC who are very vested in their view of 
the world, and it gets tough when they get involved in some of the 
conversations.  I do think the ideal is something like GeoRSS, and hope 
that TMS moves in the same direction.  We work it out in our more 
constrained world, and when we feel good about it then we should have a 
route to submit to OGC.  To some extent WFS-Simple got taken over by the 
OGC architects before it even got off the ground.

> 
>> 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? 

 From my perspective the ideal 'special relationship' would be OSGeo 
members (perhaps ones of a special committee that has to sign OGC's ip 
requirements (mostly not putting patents in to specs)) get access to the 
private OGC documents that aren't released yet, and the ability to give 
feedback and make change requests.

Though honestly we're not too bad off right now, with CCGIS being 
members, and TOPP is also members at least for this year, and I think 
gvSig also joined recently, plus Michael.  We can get change requests 
and the like in, and they're open to us developing spec type things  and 
  passing them over to become more official specs...


> 
> 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...

Yeah, I'd agree with that.  There's not a ton we're really hurting for. 
  We have enough members involved, and if there are people that we 
really need to get involved with the processes then there seem to be ways.

Chris

> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> jo
> 
> 
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-- 
Chris Holmes
The Open Planning Project
http://topp.openplans.org
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