[OSGeo-Board] questions about OGC membership

[Arnulf Christl]

Hey,
thanks for the input. I will compile the higlights from these mails and
drop the stupid standard slides that I have prepared and give them a link
instead. If they are interested they can read it. If they are interested
they will also read this, after all its pulic.

Some quick comments on this one:

On Thu, December 14, 2006 17:05, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
> 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. :-)

>From all that I know OGC serves its members. You could call that a
community of sorts, yes but it is a small or restricted one defined by
membership and corrsponding access rights. I do not know what OSGeo
wishes, I can only talk for myself and maybe speculate on some of what you
wish =:-).

I do know that we are all one body from a meta perception, there is no
denying that we all still live on the same spheroid although on as many
parallel, crossing and conflicting orbits. I don't know about happy but I
do know about fun and OGC is not fun. In that way we definitely differ.

> 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.

Correct, the traditional Free Software community might want to learn to
slow to the speed of a standards body every know and then, although it
might be less fun.

> 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.

We are standards body complimentary insofar as we implement standards and
prove that they work (or break), just as Chris pointed out. We put the
flesh and blood into the paper tiger that is the spec. And we do it quick.

> 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.

I have a hard time identifying both "them" as well as "us" (we are the
rest of us, remember...). What we can do is work out a deal on how some of
"us", namely developers, can lay their hands on "internal" docs. But as
Chris pointed out there is no pressing need. Anybody who needs anything
can get a contract from our company and thus has prime access (I think
this is what was meant).

> 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

Hey, realx. You are such an impressive physical appearance that it really
feels good to have you on one's side. I must admit that all those
proprietary vibes gave me a headache. And suddenly I found myslef voting
inline with YouKnowHow, OCG from the inside is even weirder than confused
axis order from the outside.

Regards,

>> -----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
>>
>>
>


-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.ccgis.de