[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGEO & OGC spec development
Michael P. Gerlek
mpg at lizardtech.com
Thu Jul 26 15:08:48 PDT 2007
Sean has a good point: some of the OGC specs have been developed with relatively few members in the working group, which I think can tend to lead to inclusion of some obscure feature just because there's not a wide enough group to object.
-mpg
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Sean Gillies
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 10:24 AM
> To: OSGeo Discussions
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGEO & OGC spec development
>
> Michael,
>
> Standards bodies are a good thing if they produce good standards.
>
> OGC standards tend toward fussy intricacy (compare WFS-T to the Atom
> Publishing Protocol) and pointless abstraction (all the so-called
> distributed computing platforms that no one uses). I don't
> know why, but
> I suspect that it's cultural (no, I don't mean Canadian
> culture). Going
> public has the potential to reform the culture of the OGC.
>
> Regards,
> Sean
>
> Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
> > FYI, later this week at the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver
> we're having a discussion on this hot topic:
> >
> >> Ever wonder why we need standards bodies? Can we just do
> it with a Wiki?
> >> We have open source, why not open source open standards?
> What about intellectual
> >> property protection? Can I afford to belong to a
> standards body? Can I afford
> >> not to? Do standards bodies impede or drive innovation?
> How should neo-geo and
> >> OGC work together? What are the pitfalls of "going public"?
> >
> > I'll be on the panel, as will Carl Reed from OGC.
> >
> > (Feel free to send me any comments/positions you'd like me
> to put forward.)
> >
> > -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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> >
>
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