[OSGeo-Discuss] FW: Open Letter to ASPRS, Esri and OGC related to fragmentation of the LiDAR Open Format

[Suchith Anand]

OSGeo Community,

I'm sharing this positive response from Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri, with his permission.

Thank you Jack for your stated commitment to OGC standards. We look forward to working with Esri to improving standards for everyone.

Best wishes,

Suchith


________________________________________
From: Jack Dangermond [JDangermond at esri.com]
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2015 11:36 PM
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com; mreichardt at opengeospatial.org; ssimmons at opengeospatial.org; stewart.walker2 at baesystems.com; olaf.ostensen at STATKART.NO; Keith Ryden
Subject: RE: Open Letter to ASPRS, Esri and OGC related to fragmentation of the LiDAR Open Format

Dear Dr. Anand,

Thank you very much for your letter. I appreciate your comments and I will use them to improve our contributions to the GIS community, our products, and our processes.  While my colleague Keith Ryden has already responded to your letter sent to the OGC community earlier I want to assure Esri continues to remain committed towards interoperability in all the product technology.

As for the LAS issue, we have had extensive discussions with our standards team and feel the community should use OGC to organize an open process leading to an open standard.  OGC is looking to initiate a group to study the formalization of an open standard for storing Lidar Data. We have expressed our interest in the formation of such a group and would be willing to bring our work for discussion as part of this initiative.  I believe that this would be the right avenue for focusing on the technical merits of different approaches. As long-term supporters of the OGC mission, we would hope that this group at OGC can work towards a solution that meets the requirements of the community at large.

Esri continues to have a strong relationship with ASPRS and it would be unthinkable for us to pursue something that would be contrary to ASPRS's commitments in the LIDAR space.

I have instructed my team to make sure that we all work together to improve any technical shortcomings in the current specification.

Thank you again for bringing some of the nuances of this discussion to my notice.

Warm regards,
Jack


-----Original Message-----
From: Suchith Anand [mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2015 1:25 AM
To: Jack Dangermond
Cc: discuss at lists.osgeo.org; board at lists.osgeo.org; Keith Ryden
Subject: Open Letter to ASPRS, Esri and OGC related to fragmentation of the LiDAR Open Format

Dear Jack,

I'm approaching you on behalf of the Open Source Geospatial Community, to present an Open Letter to Esri. [1]

It starts:
We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" proprietary format. This is of great concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

Could you please reply to confirm that you have received this email and that you will look into it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Kind regards,

Suchith Anand
Founder, GeoForAll
http://www.geoforall.org

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter