[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

[Landon Blake]

Frank wrote: "And I'm a very practical guy."

Me too. I wasn't trying to discourage James, just point out that he was
arguing about .doc on the OSGeo mailing list. I thought that was kinda
funny. :]

Frank wrote: " On the other hand, in many cases, government agencies
have ended up
publishing data in formats like SAIF, SDTS and various highly custom
GML schemas that are technically open, but for practical purposes they
are very difficult to utilize."

Amen. Can I get a shout out for the death of impractical standards? (I
think we should implement a sacred law every standard author should be
forced to create an implementation of his own standard beast. That might
go a long way towards solving the impractical standard problem.)

Landon


-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:13 AM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

Landon Blake wrote:
> I thought it might be wise to point out that this discussion seems to
be
> getting a little aggressive, and possibly a little personal.
> 
> All sides have made valid points. It's obvious that Mr. Fee isn't
going
> to agree with many of us on this particular issue, and his opinion is
> worth considering.
> 
> I would remind Mr. Fee, very humbly (of course), that he is on the
OSGeo
> mailing list, so in some respects he's chosen a fight in which he is
> very outnumbered. I don't know how productive it is to aggressively
> defend something like the .doc format on a mailing list for proponents
> of open source software. :]
> 
> You'll probably have about as much success as you would touting the
odt
> format on a mailing list for the Microsoft Word fan club. :]

Landon,

James is making valid points about practical aspects of openness.  I
hesitate to sign the declaration because it seems to absolutist and
not recognizing of practical aspects of openness (as opposed to de-jure
definitions of open standards).

I personally am dubious this discussion will accomplish anything useful
because of the vague generalities of the original proposition, and the
lack of a real purpose to the discussion.  But I'm also not inclined to
discourage James or others from expressing their position once the
discussion has started.

Another example often given a bit more in our realm than .doc files is
shapefiles.  They are technically a proprietary format belonging to
one proprietary vendor.  But the format is published, widely implemented
in free and proprietary software and quite understandable. So I think it
is reasonable for government data to be distributed in this format.

On the other hand, in many cases, government agencies have ended up
publishing data in formats like SAIF, SDTS and various highly custom
GML schemas that are technically open, but for practical purposes they
are very difficult to utilize.

What I would like to discourage is governments distributing in file
formats (like the mentioned new ESRI File Geodatabase) that are
effectively
closed - at least for the time being.

Like MPG, I'm sympathetic to the goals of the declaration but am
concerned
it is not sufficiently practical.  And I'm a very practical guy.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo,
http://osgeo.org

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