[OSGeo-Discuss] Software Standards - The Ugly Truth

[Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au]

Hi Landon,

IMO, to put another perspective on it:


Many organisations over the years have invested significant sums of money, 
time and effort into implementing spatial tools and customising them to 
meet their needs.

I can think of any number of examples over the last few decades where that 
investment has had to be thrown away and reimplemented using another 
product. Some examples are (fill in the blanks as you see fit):

- A vendor ceases to be financially viable and shuts up shop.

- A vendor is taken over by another entity to: remove competition; 
purchase market share; 
  because its trendy to have one of those in the portfolio; or any number 
of other reasons.

- A vendor retires a product range to focus on a new technology, but 
doesn't worry about 
  providing an upgrade path.

I'd say that most organisations have been bitten by any one of these 
examples.


The OGC standards in particular, give organisations a way to try and 
abstract their business functionality in such a way that they will be able 
to swap in and out, vendor or open source components, as they deam 
appropriate. If its done right they won't need to go back to first 
principles and start from scratch when they decide to do so.


While the OGC standards may not be perfect at the moment, they are are 
quite functional and are certainly based on a solid understanding of our 
discipline (as a reading of the abstract documentation will show). 

I personally think that if we are willing to get involved, we will be able 
to help refine the standards and their implementation, even if it is just 
by using various products and standards and providing feedback.


I applaud the OSGeo projects that are basing their design on the OGC 
standards. To me as an implementer, it just makes good sense.


Bruce





"Landon Blake" <lblake at ksninc.com> 
Sent by: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
23/06/2007 02:19 AM
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Software Standards - The Ugly Truth






I’m sending this to GeoWanking and OSGeo discuss, so I apologize in 
advance if your inbox gets hit with it twice. :]
 
I've written a blog post on the OpenJUMP blog about some of the
problems with software standards.

I imagine this post will make some people upset, but I think it raises
some valid points. I don't think that everyone involved in open source
GIS will agree with me, but I think I identify some problems with the
love of standards that our of particular interest to our community.
(In a way that isn't of interest to those that develop closed-source
GIS programs.)

At any rate, the post is a long one, so if you do read it give
yourself 5 or 10 minutes. Before you flame me remember that I'm just a
surveyor that has seen too much sun, and that my opinion doesn't count
for a whole lot in the big scheme of things. :]

You can read the post here:

http://openjump.blogspot.com/

The Sunburned Surveyor
 
 
 


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