[Ica-osgeo-labs] Website feedback

Sun Aug 30 13:23:45 PDT 2015

Nikos, good thoughts!

G4A is trying to establish fertile ground for solving big problems and therefore needs these big ideas aired in open dialogue. There may be no resolution other than these ideas are important to discuss and further our understanding of the issues. 

We have a 'new' world we are trying to create, a sustainable one versus our current trajectory, which has us accelerating towards impact. We are living well beyond the Earth's regenerative means. Naturally we must use all the tools available to us as we move our world toward a more generous place, versus the pyramid scheme managing our resources today. Open and proprietary need to be ^mixed^ such that we accelerate solutions for, and understanding of, today's rather dire circumstance. And of course we benefit from an open dialogue of ideas for how we want to prioritize our efforts. 

Example of the open and proprietary 'mix' ---
The Europa Challenge Alaska team built their own 'measuring' unit. This involved assembling and integrating the 'sensors' for GPS, compass, accelerometer, magnetometer, Wi-Fi, power and communication. These were high school kids ^mixing^ proprietary stuff together with open 'stuff.' The result is an open hardware 'mixed package' yet still managed by an open software system. 

Ortho-mosaicking/geo-rectifying tools do not yet exist as open source, but we need to get that open UAS collected imagery and lidar data into an open source platform for analyses. And right now we must rely on proprietary tools for that middle step. So we've got to mix! Until we have open tools for the whole process.  

In an ideal world, a real one, we need to smartly combine whatever technology best serves the future. We are going to need both open and proprietary technology to do that.
http://www.edlinesites.net/pages/America_Bridge_Project/Europa_Challenge 

Not sure if this adds to or detracts from the dialogue. But like Nikos said, appreciate having it.

-Patrick
 Program Manager
 NASA World Wind

-----Original Message-----
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of labrinos at eled.auth.gr
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 12:15 PM
To: 'Siki Zoltan'; 'Andy Anderson'
Cc: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Website feedback

Hi all,

I am really excited about the discussion between Zoltan and Andy and many others. THIS IS ANOTHER REASON WHY SOMEONE SHOULD JOIN. You can never read all this arguments if you are not member of this network. I think we forgot this very simple reason. We can learn a lot from these discussions.

Best regards
Nikos 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Nikos Lambrinos
Associate Professor
Dept. of Primary Education
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki Greece, GR-54124 Tel. +30 2310 991201
Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr
Web pages: http://labrinos.webpages.auth.gr/digital_geography/
                    http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/
----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Siki Zoltan
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 10:05 PM
To: Andy Anderson
Cc: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Website feedback

Dear Andy,

I think we will not agree. If nobody else is interested in this discussion, let's finish it.

My last comment:

The OSGeo/FOSS4G projects are always looking for contributors. By the help of Geo4All network OSGeo projects can get more contribution not only in the form of trainings, avocations but research from the universities.

If you use a ready and well tested function of an open source GIS (which function can be very important from your researcher point of view) it is not a research FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A FOSS4G PROJECT.

If you publish your research results and mention that OS GIS was used is an avocation FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A FOSS4G PROJECT.

That is my last 2 cents,

Zoltan

On Sun, 30 Aug 2015, Andy Anderson wrote:

But we're talking about reasons why any university should choose to establish such a lab, are we not? These can be very broad, to quote the GeoForAll page: "The goal of the initiative is to promote and enhance education, research and service activities carried out by these stakeholders in the area of Open Geospatial Science & Applications all over the world."

Such research is not specifically defined, and could include application as well as development. In my experience the former drives the latter.

In any case, I think my rewrite of Reason #5 does include the type of research you are describing.

Andy

On Aug 30, 2015, at 2:26 AM, Siki Zoltan <siki at agt.bme.hu> wrote:

Dear Andy,

I don't think so the it is a very specific line of research. We are not now speaking about the whole GIS community, we are speaking about universities where Geo4All labs may be established.

Probably more than 99 percent of the users of FOSS4G software won't look in the source code, but they have the chance.

I have learnt a lot from the source code of other programmers...

Regards,
Zoltan

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015, Andy Anderson wrote:

Hi, Zoltan,

I understand now, but you are referring to a very specific line of research. You wrote the reason #5 as if it referred to all scientific research. I do believe for this purpose it needs to be generally written. I thank you for the inspiration, though.

Andy

On Aug 29, 2015, at 3:34 PM, Siki Zoltan <siki at agt.bme.hu> wrote:

Dear Andy,

you misunderstand me, when your research aim is to improve an algorithm built in the software or you would like to develop a new algorithm you must know the details built in the software. I didn't say that the proprietary software are not useful. I say open source for the above purpose is more useful.

Zoltan

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015, Andy Anderson wrote:

Or, following other suggestions after I finished my tract,

Reason #5: In scientific research the sharing and reproducibility of methods and results is essential. Open-source software and standard formats provide the broadest means for the distribution of analytical procedures and data, and therefore the greatest opportunity to ensure their accuracy through review by other scientists and to become the foundations of new and collaborative research. It can also provide a low-cost way to verify calculations made by proprietary applications.

Andy

On Aug 29, 2015, at 2:41 PM, Andy Anderson <aanderson at amherst.edu
wrote:

I don't agree with the statement "In scientific researches black boxes (commercial software) are not so useful", and I doubt that most people would accept the principle that. One would have to know all the details of the used algorithms (source code) to make the right conclusions. They fly in the face of the reality of scientific research, which is built on the efforts of many people that we trust for various reasons, in particular that they have become standard approaches in this or that subfield of science. Most people are trying to build on that without rebuilding the wheel.

'Black box' equipment is endemic in science exactly because they are useful. Many people here probably use GPS devices in their research. Anyone have one that they built themselves? Possibly a few, but how many actually built the GPS chip and wrote the signal processing software? We trust these devices, even though we know there can be issues. Part of being a scientist is watching for inconsistencies and working around them if possible. Most of the time this will be due to user error but occasionally it will require starting over with new equipment, perhaps even from a different company if you get a lot of lemons from them.

It's also idealistic that one should know ?the details of the used algorithms?. Most scientists will only know what an algorithm is used for, and perhaps the basic principle behind it, but most won't know or care about its details. It is generally accepted that one can trust the implementation of software that has had a lot of eyes on it, commercial or open source, at least until it fails in an obvious way (and user error is always the first place to look).

Commercial software will generally tell you the algorithm they are using and sometimes even the package they are using, and it often comes down to open-source software anyway, e.g. Many software are built on top of BLAS-compatible libraries, including Armadillo, LAPACK, LINPACK, GNU Octave, Mathematica, MATLAB, NumPy, and R. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Linear_Algebra_Subprograms. These packages have a long history and extensive testing, by NIST, no less http://math.nist.gov/mcsd/Reports/95/yearly/node59.html. Nevertheless there may still be errors that creep in, e.g. with new hardware. Their implementations, whether commercial or open-source, can also have errors. And there can also be errors in how they are used. Nevertheless they are generally trusted across the board.

Certainly every scientific paper should be describing the tools used, whether Matlab or R or custom software, and provide references to the algorithms applied, to give other scientists the opportunity to critique the results. Good reviewers will make sure this is true before a paper is published, and call out well-known issues (I would certainly look askance at the use of Excel for nonlinear data fitting, http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~bdm25/excel2007.pdf. But the probability is very small that a reviewer will demand the work be performed with open-source software rather than commercial software or that the author explain standard algorithms.

The more general observation that I've heard in this area is that one's calculations should be performed with multiple pieces of software (commercial or otherwise) to ensure consistency, a form of the repeatability required for scientific acceptance. In the absence of obvious errors or inconsistencies I doubt many people do that themselves, let alone go digging into open source code to review what it's doing. And only computational scientists are likely to do the latter, not the research-focused scientist.
There's too much of a rush to get the results and publish it, so they'll just look for another black box.

There is an opportunity here to focus on reproducibility, which is often overlooked in science (see, for example, the very recent news here:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers-bleak-verdict-
on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results. While confirming other's results is generally considered boring, there's always the opportunity to contradict them, which is very exciting, see, for example, this famous case:
http://blogs.umass.edu/econnews/2013/09/24/media-buzz-over-reinhart-rogoff-critique-continues/ .

So I would suggest the following statement instead:

Reason #5: In scientific research the reproducibility of results is essential, and that includes data produced by analytical software.
Open-source software can provide a low-cost way to verify calculations made by commercial applications.

Andy

On Aug 29, 2015, at 3:00 AM, Siki Zoltan <siki at agt.bme.hu> wrote:

Dear Charles,

I would add a 5th reason.

Reason #5: In scientific researches black boxes (commercial software) are not so useful. One have to know all the details of the used algorithms (source code) to make the right conclusions, change an algorithm (source code) to get new experiences. it can be done only with open source software.

Universities and Geo4All labs are research centers, too.
I hope you understand my point, may be my text have to be edited.

Regards,
Zoltan

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015, Charles Schweik wrote:

Hi Suchith, all

Patrick Hogan made some helpful edits to the text I have on my lab's site (thanks Patrick!), and I then edited it a little more toward some possible useful language for the 'Why universities should join' text. I'm sure there are other points to be made, but it's a start. The text is attached.

Suchith, not sure who is leading the update to the GeoForAll page on this topic...

Cheers
Charlie

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Jeff McKenna 
<jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
wrote:

On twitter just now a community leader made a comment that our website (http://www.geoforall.org) doesn't clearly point out the benefits for a university.  We outline "How to Join" http://www.geoforall.org/how_to_join/, but not really "Why to Join".

I thought this was a good point, and now that we all understand it more, it might be good to highlight this on the site.

-jeff