[Board] Open Letter to ASPRS, Esri and OGC related to fragmentation of the LiDAR Open Format

[Suchith Anand]

Dear Mark,

I'm approaching you on behalf of the Open Source Geospatial Community, to present an Open Letter to OGC. [1]

It starts:
We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" proprietary format. This is of great concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

Could you please reply to confirm that you have received this email and that you will look into it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Kind regards,

Suchith Anand
Founder, GeoForAll
http://www.geoforall.org

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter



This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee
and may contain confidential information. If you have received this
message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. 

Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this
message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the
author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the
University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an
attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your
computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email
communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as
permitted by UK legislation.