[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

[Landon Blake]

Frank wrote: "I also do not accept that getting government data in open
standard formats is a basic right..."

I had to respond to this statement. :]

I'd be pretty upset of my federal, state, or local government released
written information in French. It would be pretty useless to me. I think
the same could be said for digital information in some type of
proprietary binary format. If you don't have the software needed to read
it, it might as well be in French.

As a consequence, I don think governments have a responsibility to
distribute digital information in a form that is palatable. Preferably
this data would be in a  human-readable format, and would also be
capable of being parsed, but palatable at a minimum. Give me a PDF if
nothing else, but I'd rather have it as a CSV file. :]

I would also point out that the political climate in the United States
when it comes to open source and open standards is quite different in
the United States than it is in Europe. Companies like Microsoft are
very much involved in applying money and political pressure to make sure
formats like .doc remain mainstream and in use by the government.

I don't think this is the case in Europe, but I could be mistaken.

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 10:59 AM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Sign the Hague declaration

Benjamin Henrion wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Free of patents? ESRI has always been the "Microsoft of GIS", so
beware
> of patents on this particular format.

Benjamin,

It is hard to always ensure there cannot be a patent that could apply,
but for a simple format like shapefile it would be hard to apply a
patent.

Note that a company can hold patents on "open standards" too.  The fact
that one company promulgates a format does not give them that much
leverage
in patenting it.  Patents are a danger onto their own, and not directly
tied
(IMHO) to the open standard vs. nominally proprietary format discussion.

>> 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.
> 
> "Practical guys" makes compromises with freedom. As a citizen, I don't
> accept the government rolling over my basic rights.

I do not accept your claim that my being practical is equivelent to
making
compromises with freedom.  I also do not accept that getting government
data in open standard formats is a basic right, and attempting to make
this
equivelence to some degree cheapens the really basic rights (like rights
to due process under the law, etc).

I would add, taking such a position is very alienating to the bulk of
humanity
that you need to get behind an idea like this before it will actually
take
root.

I think there is a great danger to the open source, open data, and open
standards efforts in the attempts to legislate them.  Done carelessly,
legislation will inevitably lead to situations that are rediculous and
this
will discredit the whole effort.  We see similar things with free
healthcare,
unions, minority rights (all of which I support) which if promoted
without
reference to common sense will result in a serious backlash.

Certainly the government mandated use of some large unwieldy "standard"
file formats in the geospatial realm has left a lot of people with a
bad taste in their mouth with regard to "standards".

I can see I'm getting rather broad here.  I'd better stop now.

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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