[Ica-osgeo-labs] [TC-Discuss] Open Letter for the need for Open Standards in LiDAR

Mon Apr 27 04:29:37 PDT 2015

Thank you Keith for your response on behalf of Esri to our draft Open Letter [1] on the need for Open Standards in LiDAR. Unfortunately this response fails to provide a commitment by Esri to address the key concerns raised in the Open Letter.  Cameron Shorter has provided a line-by-line refuting of Esri's statement in his blog post titled "Esri's claim at being good 'Standards' citizens is questionable" [2]. I will suggest you respond to these specific concerns.

You will notice the Open Letter is presented by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, and is signed by over 100 prominent people from the geospatial industry. Many of their comments highlight how deeply the community cares about usability of data and the importance of open standards.

We request Esri act in the spirit of Keith's letter, which describes the importance of open standards. And we look forward to seeing how Esri proposes to reverse the current Lidar format fragmentation that is unfolding. Please include actions and timeframes.

Best wishes,

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

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[2] http://cameronshorter.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/esris-claim-at-being-good-standards.html

________________________________________
From: TC-Discuss [tc-discuss-bounces at lists.opengeospatial.org] On Behalf Of Keith Ryden [kryden at esri.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 7:54 PM
To: tc-discuss at lists.opengeospatial.org
Subject: Re: [TC-Discuss] Open Letter for the need for Open Standards in        LiDAR

Regarding Dr. Anand’s concerns and the referenced letter below:

Esri has long understood the importance of interoperability between systems and users of geographic information and services. Esri has participated in the development of national, information community, OGC, and ISO TC 211 standards from the development of the US Spatial Data Transfer Standard in the 1980s through the development of OGC Geopackage today. As a sustaining member of ASPRS and a Principle member of OGC, Esri would gladly participate in efforts to further the development of open LIDAR and point cloud standards. Keep in mind that ASPRS owns and maintains LAS, along with other spatial information standards, and would have the lead in moving it into  OGC or ISO TC211 for further work if they so desired. Esri will continue to support and use the ASPRS LAS standard; the Optimized LAS (see FAQ at https://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library) is not intended to replace LAS but to enhance access to remotely stored LIDAR information for our users.

Regards,

Keith Ryden
ESRI Software Development

From: TC-Discuss [mailto:tc-discuss-bounces+kryden=esri.com at lists.opengeospatial.org] On Behalf Of Suchith Anand
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2015 10:30 AM
To: discuss at lists.osgeo.org; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org; tc-discuss at lists.opengeospatial.org
Subject: [TC-Discuss] Open Letter for the need for Open Standards in LiDAR

To all colleagues in Academia, Government and Industry who have interest in maintaining Open Standards:

On behalf of "Geo for All" community, http://www.geoforall.org, I would like to bring to your kind attention a significant development that can lead to undermining our principle for Open Geospatial Standards. I request you review the wikipage http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter   that is meant to represent our concern and allow for ongoing input and expression by our geospatial community.

We specifically thank Martin Isenburg (author of LASzip and LAStools, http://laszip.org and http://lastools.org) for  bringing this matter to our attention (email below) and an email thread of our initial discussion of this subject that highlight the wider implication of this issue http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html
We request all who wish to support this effort to protect Open Standards for Geospatial data to kindly add your name , email, affiliation details to the wikipage directly or email  Patrick Hogan (Email - patrick.hogan at nasa.gov ) with the subject heading "Support for Open Geo Standards" and the following fields (Name, Email, Affiliation ) and we will gladly add this to the wiki.

There is current interest by the OGC in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content. The OGC invites interested members who wish to  work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program  E-mail : ssimmons at opengeospatial.org ) to register their interest and discuss details.  OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at our next Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in June 1st (more details will be send soon) to bring together all interested from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps. We welcome feedback and input from Esri and invite them to join this effort to  support open LIDAR formats.

I thank you all again for your attention and support for this important matter.

Best wishes,

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

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:

Please review: Open Letter asking to avoid format fragmentation in LiDAR standards

Date:

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 12:14:51 +1000

From:

Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com><mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>

To:

standards at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org> <standards at lists.osgeo.org><mailto:standards at lists.osgeo.org>

Hi all,
A number of us have been collaboratively developing an Open Letter asking key stakeholders to avoid fragmentation in LiDAR standards.

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 concern since the fragmentation of the LAS format will lead to reduced interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

Could all interested please:
1. Review and provide feedback to this standards email list
2. If you agree with the letter, please add your name to the "Signed" section

--

Cameron Shorter,

Software and Data Solutions Manager

LISAsoft

Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,

26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009

P +61 2 9009 5000,  W www.lisasoft.com,  F +61 2 9009 5099

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