[GRASS5] Applicant for developing

[Thierry Laronde]

Hello,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 09:20:36AM +0200, Radim Blazek wrote:
> On Saturday 26 July 2003 21:30, Thierry Laronde wrote:
> > Since I have started a GIS work where I am, at the moment, hired, and
> > since I have tested some proprietary GIS software and GRASS, finding
> > GRASS alltogether better thought than some poor all Access(TM) based
> > proprietary solution (claiming OpenGIS conformity so I hope you don't
> > want to go that way, do you?),
> 
> Probably not, simply because I am too tired to start all the work from scratch,
> but I see it as a quite big problem that GRASS doesn't conform to SFS (OpenGIS).

Please don't take anything as an "attack" ---since I know how poorly
rewarding the work for open source/free software might be, with people
always critizing.

These are just remarks from an user and also a developer.

> Not because SFS is better (and may be it is in some particular cases), but because 
> almost all the world is using (or will be using in near future) SFS. 

I don't know the details of the specifications but I have seen one
proprietary implementation. This software is handling _all_ its data
through a database access, with an intolerable overhead, a poor result
and this is in no way "open" since all one has access to is Large binary
objects unreadable.

If the aim is to allow GRASS to interface with others, why not? But if
this interface will spoil the internal representation of the data and
the efficiency of the access, I'm a priori more reluctant.

My point of view is probably limited, indeed perhaps narrow, but I
prefer a clean solution to a "popular" one. My definition of "open" is
also narrow: what must be open is the door to let me escape with my
data. If I have means to import a standard format and to export to a
standard format without loosing the added value I have worked on, for me
the software is correct (whether proprietary/open, free(gratis)/sold).
(if this were true, everybody will have to implement, on a standard
basis, one import module, and one export one. And that's all).

That's partly why I'm a bit surprised that the "open GIS" initiative
has not focused to a define a standard file format (based perhaps on STEP iso
10303).

But it is probably too soon for me to speak about this with the sole
experience of a not optimal Windows oriented application: I'm perhaps
afraid about a deviation of the specifications, and not the spirit of
it.

Regards.
-- 
Thierry Laronde <tlaronde at polynum.org>