[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGEO & OGC spec development

[Raj Singh]

Also remember that OGC has made its Mass Market Working Group  
discussion list public:
http://mail.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/mass-market-geo

This is the best way for non-members to get in on certain  
discussions, particularly the ones Jeroen mentions. That allows  
individuals to put forth their opinions. A unified OSGeo opinion  
would certainly carry more weight, so I think it's valuable to move  
that discussion forward.
---
Raj


On Jul 16, 2007, at 5:16 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

> A number of us have this same sort of conversation in the past, but  
> we've never come up with anything that satisifies all concerned...  
> Perhaps a BOF/Summit/Thingie at the conference in September to talk  
> about this?
>
> -mpg
>
>
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss- 
> bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jeroen Ticheler
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:12 PM
> To: OSGeo Discussions
> Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGEO & OGC spec development
>
> Hi all,
> Last week I attended the Open Geospatial Consortium Technical  
> Committee (OGC-TC) meeting in Paris.
>
> For those not to familiar with this meeting, it consists of a  
> series of Working Group (WG) meetings that mostly run around the  
> development of specifications (or standards if you wish) dealing  
> with geo-informatics. The most prominent specifications coming from  
> OGC are Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and  
> Geographic Markup Language (GML). There's a whole list of other  
> specs available or under development. OSGEO projects work with a  
> substantial number of them. See http://www.opengeospatial org for  
> more details.
>
> With this email I would like to touch upon two issues that I think  
> are relevant to OSGEO. I hope bringing this up can trigger some  
> discussion on how OSGEO would best benefit from the OGC spec  
> development process:
>
> 1- Discussions related to Google's KML and Web Map Context
> 2- Discussions related to a Tiled Web Map Service specifications
>
> There was discussion on the possibility that KML becomes an OGC  
> specification and, more importantly, that it could be used to  
> replace the wining Web Map Context (WMC) specification. A number of  
> OSGEO projects use the Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD (symbology))  
> specification and the WMC. There's a great deal of overlap between  
> these and KML. It is likely in the interest of these projects to  
> share their experience with OGC and see some of that reflected in  
> future OGC specs.
>
> There was also discussion about a new Tiled WMS specification. Such  
> spec can have different forms, and could be conceived as a new spec  
> or as an extension (or application profile) of a Web Map Service.  
> Two approaches were presented and two other approaches were  
> mentioned, among which the approach taken within the OSGEO community.
>
> Observing these discussions, my impression is that OSGEO has an  
> important role to play in the further development of these OGC  
> specs. We can obviously take the easy route and let OGC go its way.  
> We could than come up with in-house, open specifications that will  
> compete with OGC specs still under development. The development of  
> the specs is likely to be quicker than going through OGC. However,  
> I feel that with limited effort by the community we can have a very  
> positive influence on the OGC spec development. We can make sure  
> experiences in OSGEO are reflected in the OGC specs. The WMS-T is  
> an obvious example of this. It was kind of frustrating to not see  
> that experience properly represented at the WMS-WG.
>
> OSGEO is very young still, so frustration is not an expression of  
> dissatisfaction in this case :-) rather, I think it might be time  
> to establish a way to formally represent OSGEO in OGC. This could  
> be through those OSGEO members that already hold a TC level  
> membership to OGC (the logical first step I would think) and later  
> possibly through a direct OSGEO TC Membership to OGC. Also, we  
> could consider a focal point in OSGEO where specification  
> development is discussed and coordinated. This may have the form of  
> a Committee for instance. I'm hesitant to propose new Committees,  
> but if there's enough interest to have a central coordination point  
> dealing with standards and specs, it may make sense :-)
>
> Greetings from Rome,
> Jeroen
>
> _______________________
> Jeroen Ticheler
> FAO-UN
> Tel: +39 06 57056041
> http://www.fao.org/geonetwork
> 42.07420°N 12.34343°E
>
>
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