[OSGeo-Board] Re: [OSGeo-info] press question

[Jo Walsh]

dear head cheese, and fellow more subsidiary cheeses, 

On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 01:00:06PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Actually, I'd rather you didn't quote that.  I used the word "we" several
> times for stuff that isn't decided at all.  For instance, I wrote "we
> don't want to take on a "standards process" as a part of our mission."
> but that isn't really firmly established.  You may quote me on the 
> following:

Hm yes, this does sound like shoe-shuffling to me. It depends what you
define as a "standards process" and what the outcome of it is. OSGeo
projects are reference implementations for OGC standards and arguably
inform what works and doesn't, influencing the standards process a lot
through activities like OWS-N. There is a lot of weight of open
standards wonks in the OSGeo membership and there have been a couple
of yet-to-be-really fruitful, but active and participatory efforts at
collective lightweight "standards" for data exchange where heavier
standards are not addressing the problem space, or not addressing it
in an implementor- and user- friendly way. 

While part of the mission is encouraging the adoption of open
standards that should include encouraging their implementation both
inside and outside OSGeo projects and that includes encouraging the
implementation of "homegrown" standards like, as you say, GeoRSS. I
think OSGeo could continue to have an increasingly valuable role to
play as a testbed and safe space for standards prototype development
and i definitely would not like to rule this out in public! :)

cheers,


jo
> """
> This is not well understood internally yet.  On the one hand, I don't want
> to take on a "standards process" as a part of our mission.  I am generally
> pleased to have OGC, ISO, IETF, etc take on that role which is a hard one.
> On the other hand, we have lots of folks on different projects interested in
> establishing some defacto common approaches, which in some cases might later
> be taken to a formal standards organization.
> 
> Whether we formalize this in any way is still open to debate.  There are
> those that would like to see OSGeo as a home for lightweight standards like
> GeoRSS and tile spec standards.
> """