[Liblas-devel] RE: libLAS/libPC -- looking for funding, sponsorship

[Michael P. Gerlek]

I should mention too that if you yourself are not in a position to sponsor
the libLAS project, you can still aid the effort by asking others who might
be in a position to help -- your employer, your lidar software vendor, etc.

Thanks.

-mpg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael P. Gerlek [mailto:mpg at flaxen.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 8:25 AM
> To: liblas-devel at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: libLAS/libPC -- looking for funding, sponsorship
> 
> Do you use libLAS in your products, or would you if it had some additional
> features you need?  If so, please read on.
> 
> 
> libLAS has been a success, but the world of point cloud support for
geospatial
> applications goes well beyond just reading and writing the LAS format --
we
> want support for other formats, spatial index integration, a suite of core
> command line tools, database integration, and so on.  To that end, as some
> of you may have already heard, the lasLAS team has begun work on "version
> 2" of libLAS, known as libPC.  The project goals are:
> 
> 1. libPC is a library which provides APIs for reading, writing, and
>    processing point cloud data of various formats.  Additionally, some
>    command line tools are provided.  As GDAL is to 2D pixels, libPC is to
>    multidimensional points.
> 
> 2. From a market perspective, libPC is "version 2" of libLAS.  The actual
>    code base will be different, however, and the APIs will not be
>    compatible.
> 
> 3. The libPC implementation has high performance, yet the API remains
>    flexible.  We recognize that these two goals will conflict at times and
>    will weigh the tradeoffs pragmatically.
> 
> 4. The architecture of a libPC-based workflow will be a pipeline of
>    connected stages, each stage being either a data source (such as a file
>    reader), a filter (such as a point thinner), or data sink (such as a
>    file writer).
> 
> 5. The libPC library will be in C++, but will also include a C API and
will
>    have SWIG bindings for languages like Python and C#. libPC will support
>    multiple platforms, specifically Windows, Linux, and Mac.
> 
> 6. libPC is open source and is released under a BSD license.
> 
> 
> In part with funding from a generous US govt sponsor (not sure if I should
> name them, sorry), libPC development is already well underway.
> 
> However, more development needs to happen before it can reach parity
> with libLAS and start to go into production mode.  To do this, of course,
your
> material support is needed.
> 
> If you use libLAS today in your world -- or if you would like to, if only
it had
> some missing feature -- please consider helping to fund the libLAS team.
> This can be done in a variety of ways:
> 
>   - "buy" open development time to further the core libPC work
>   - "sponsor" the team to implement a particular feature you need
>   - loan a member of your own development staff to the team for a specific
> task
> 
> Please contact me (mpg at flaxen.com) if you're interested in supporting open
> source software.
> 
> -mpg