[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [OSGeo-Standards] TMS and WMTS

[Brian Russo]

I have a simpler/better idea - have the OGC stop creating
unnecessarily complex standards hundreds of pages long that hardly
anyone implements. This will save time/money, and benefit users,
proprietary and open source developers alike.

Sometimes I think it's a concerted effort to make sure the 'open'
standards are as complex as possible so few people have the resources
to implement them (except proprietary vendors and academics with tons
of time) and the rest of us all stick with proprietary standards
(because we have the software - the lazy solution), or simple open
ones like GeoRSS-Simple (because a normal person with a normal
schedule can actually understand it).

WMS has been a pretty good success even though I'm sure that'll get
some snickering from the peanut gallery due to its age - it is still a
common method especially for some older software we support - but when
I look at the list of OGC standards
(http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards), for the most part I see
well-intentioned but effectively irrelevant standards. What happened?

Sarcasm? Maybe, but WMS 1.3.0 runs in at 84 pages, and is
well-written/concise. Looking at just the GML description gives me a
headache - http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml. It proudly
proclaims it's an ISO standard as well. So what? If it's barely used
it's barely a standard. Maybe my corner of the world is just strange
and elsewhere it's a candyland of people happily plucking geodata from
OGC-standardized data services while riding unicorns, but I don't
think so. I think we're pretty typical.

OGCification of standards like KML are even more hilarious since
Google Earth is well below ESRI on my list of 'opendata-compliant
software'. Sure lots of people 'support' KML but overwhelmingly they
support some simplified subset of the ~250 page standards document.


  - bri


>>> Schuyler Erle wrote:
>>>>
>>>> * On  6-Apr-2010 at  6:13PM EDT, Cameron Shorter said:
>>>>
>>>>> Suggested improvement: The OGC should weight OGC testbed funding to
>>>>> favour  Open Source implementations, as the implementations are
>>>>> significantly more valuable to OGC sponsors and the greater GIS
>>>>> community as the implementations are made available for free.
>>>>
>>>> One last point: The OGC should take the final suggestion made by
>>>> Cameron very seriously.
>>>>
>>>> SDE



-- 
Brian Russo / (808) 271 4166