[Incubator] MetaCRS Incubation Application

[Frank Warmerdam]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> Why MetaCRS? It looks like four libraries, and even in different
> languages. One of the libraries isn't even 100% CRS based (geotiff?).
> The concept feels a little forced to me.

Paul,

The first, strongest, motivating factor to make this project a "federation"
is that no single project seemed to have enough developers involved to
make up an OSGeo style developer community (form a meaningful PSC, etc).

The second reason is that by getting them to operate as a federation it will
encourage meaningful dialog and gives a meta project to take on responsibility
for shared components, such as coordinate system dictionaries - all that
EPSG translation stuff and so on.

Frankly, the concept is somewhat forced and I'm not really sure yet whether
it will evolve into a cooperating project community or remain some sort of
Frankenstein monster made from parts that keep falling apart again.

But, there are important things - like the rules used in the EPSG translations
that end up in PROJ.4, PostGIS, etc that are currently handled by me by fiat
and not really belonging to any particular project.  Even if the software
components (CS-Map, PROJ.4, etc) don't end up sharing much directly, I'll
be very pleased if this project gives us a shared place to handle:

  1) Dictionary translation and maintenance.
  2) A place to hammer out and agree on what OSGeo OGC Well Known Text
     looks like, and how to get to it from various other variations.
  3) A place to argue^H^H^H^H^Hdiscuss about projections that isn't tied
     to just one software implemention.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org