[OSGeo-Board] OSGeo status regarding implementation of standards

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,
On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 08:57:34AM -0800, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
> I'm kinda curious what exactly OGC means by asking this question --
> "whether OSGeo wants to become an active standardization body."  

Well, several of us have made public answers of "no" in different, and
I hope convincing, ways :) This question isn't new.
 
> (fyi, I've heard a few off-list wonderings in the past couple days about
> our standards position & so forth, largely as a result of AdenaS's blog.

For those who have not seen the article in question: 
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2329&trv=1
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/jive/archive/2006/11/wms_tiling_or_w.html 
Jody's response added this to his comments on Adena's blog:

[[ personally I find [OGC's] direct use of ISO standards is starting to
"close" the door" ]] - some online abstract specifications have recently
changed to point directly at ISO docs which require a paid license.

I could speculate at this point that OGC may be getting some downward
pressure from ISO which is causing this to happen - why would OGC 
deliberately raise the bar for its implementation community? So
upwards pressure from OSGeo is complicating their stance.

I believe everything I read on wikipedia. I am surprised to read there
that it is acceptable for an "open" standard to carry material
constraints on implementation - eg licensing terms. OGC = white knights!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format

Well, it's all about people and about implementations. OSGeo helps to
gather together the people who care, *and* provides an active avenue
of more involvment in OGC spinoff efforts  as GeoRSS has become and as
Raj's WFS-Simple/WFS-Basic effort is doing now. It's often the same
faces and the same packages supporting interfaces. We are just a site
for a process that has been going on for a while and that is not
possible, i think, to own or buy or sell.

If this nervousness has come about because a developing specification
is in the OSGeo namespace - well, that's branding politics, what more? 
I hope there is another one in the pipeline, Stefan Keller's work with
the geodata committee on dclite4g, simple geospatial extensions to
Dublin Core for metadata, and a simple catalog query interface derived
from WFS-Simple and Tom Kralidis' OWSCat. And yes this is just hacking
and talking and experimenting with what works and what doesn't. 
Perhaps it'll help, for now to keep anything that is "published" in a
neutral third-party namespace....

cheers,


jo