[geomoose-psc] When Open Specs Close

[Dan Little]

-
https://github.com/openlayers/ol-mapbox-style/pull/940#issuecomment-1855415159

We use a "vendored" version of the ol-mapbox-style-spec to power GeoMoose's
styling right now. This may have an effect on us over the next few months
that motivate moving some of the styling engine over to something like
GeoStyler's.

This does force me to shine light on a few GeoMoose things that I've been
struggling with in the last two years:
1. How can we keep being the "plug-in-data-and-go" solution? How do we
become the best at that? MapServer can feel very difficult to work with
despite its performance. I think MapServer 8 is a great piece of software
and I understand many of the design decisions but if I've grown up on E**I
stuff, at this point, it'll be difficult to approach.
2. How can we get better at vector styling? This may be Ahab's Whale but is
definitely something I think about. Styling in the app, styling data, how
do we serve data that is easy to style? Etc. etc.

Things I know we can't make a part of our standard install and expect easy
uptake:
- Cloud
- Docker
- "Compile."

There are solutions I would love to think about but have left off the table:
- Create a mapfile editor. It's been tried but with narrow constraints it
might work.
- Jump to QGIS server and/or piggy back on it to allow publishing whole
apps. Keeping up with these changes are likely a full time job.
- "F**k it, we're the mapserver now!" Collaborate with or upon a solution
written in rust or go that support cross platform compilation. Double click
a binary, it starts the server, go through the wizard to tell it where some
data is, and you're off to the races. Want it as a service? Sure here's the
10-step guide to making it work with pm2 or on Debian.

Thank you for taking the space for this. 😆 I genuinely want us to have a
product that people can use, use easily, and provide some real benefit to
the ecosystem in ways other projects aren't. I love that this team has
always focused on what it takes to do GIS in the trenches and what that
user profile looks like.
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