[Live-demo] Request for inclusion in OSGeo Live - Iris

[Ian Edwards]

Hi Cameron,

I agree with your assessment - at this stage it is likely that the majority
of the current users of OSGeo Live will not derive an immediate benefit
from Iris, and therefore we do not need to make a fuss about the addition
in the documentation.

The other side of the argument is that we expect to increase the number of
new users of OSGeo Live who are working in meteorology, climate sciences
and research - particularly those who work with what are perceived as the
"awkward set of GIS files", e.g. NetCDF and other lesser known formats.
These new users will benefit greatly from having a direct link to other
OSGeo projects.  Our NetCDF -> Raster conversion is many times more
powerful and flexible than the basic support that is currently available in
GDAL (not to mention the frustratingly basic tools that are available in
common proprietary packages)

We'll go ahead and produce the quickstart and documentation - but we're
happy for you to decide nearer the release which path would be in the best
interest of OSGeo Live.  As you say, linking can easily be added on a later
release.

Many thanks

Ian


On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com
> wrote:

>  Ian,
> Based upon comments so far, I believe that we should certainly include
> Iris should be included on OSGeo-Live, such that you can use OSGeo-Live in
> your foss4g workshops.
>
> I'm personally think that we should hold off on linking IRIS into our main
> documentation until a future release, after IRIS has built up more of a
> community, however I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
>
> On 13/06/13 21:32, Ian Edwards wrote:
>
>   Thank you all for the comments (and for the offers of support)
>
>
>  The issues that Cameron raises are very important, and as a user of
> OSGeo Live I personally agree that each of these points should be carefully
> considered.
>
>
>  1. Is the project too specialised for the vast majority of people who
> pick up OSGeo-Live?
>
>  Iris is powerful and specialised but it also has benefits for the whole
> range of OSGeo Live users. Our workshop at FOSS4G 2013 is aimed at both
> experienced developers and at complete beginners (e.g. users who are new to
> python) http://2013.foss4g.org/provisional/workshops#W15. In the workshop
> we will demonstrate how the underlying plotting library (based on python's
> matplotlib) can be used for batch processing of multiple cartographic plots
> for any use case.
>
>  As a comparison: WCS is perceived as complex and specialist compared to
> WMS. Libraries such as Iris have a very important role to play for handling
> multidimensional data (including detailed meta data within the file) from
> many sources and fit well with both OGC standards and other OSGeo packages.
>
>
>  2. Is it seriously used outside of UK Met Office?
>
> Massimo has given one independent example of Iris being in use
> internationally, his message to the list also shares our excitement about
> integration into the OSGeo stack (we have use cases for ncWMS, GeoServer,
> PyCSW and ZOO-Project and it's likely that either we, or the community,
> will develop a QGIS plugin to provide an easier interface to the library).
> The development of the software (and the LGPL licence) was specifically to
> enable use outside of the Met Office and to promote easy collaboration
> among users.
>
>
>  3. We need to be careful that we don't include every project looking for
> a community
>
> I agree with this statement the most. In this case we're not looking for a
> community/home – we're interested in integrating with the rest of the open
> source stack that we belong to, and in supporting the community to work
> effectively with emerging technologies like WCS 2.0 and NetCDF.
>
>
>  4. Maybe IRIS would be a better candidate to join OSGeo-Live in a future
> release?
>
> The case will certainly be stronger when we can demonstrate many examples
> of Iris integrating into the full software stack. Our reason for applying
> now is because a) integration work is already well under way, but it will
> be easier (for the rest of the community) by making the library easily
> available alongside the rest of the stack, b) we want to ensure the
> software is available alongside GeoServer and QGIS for our FOSS4G workshop
> – we could make our own live DVD... but it would be based on OSGeo Live and
> we'd loose the benefit of having the library available to other conference
> attendees who are interested in the presentations and also the wider OSGeo
> community.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Hamish <hamish_b at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Cameron wrote:
>> > Maybe IRIS would be a better
>> > candidate to join OSGeo-Live in a future release?
>>
>>  IRIS 1.3 needed 3.3mb of disk space. I assume 1.4.0 is not too
>> dissimilar, and that the support and demo files don't alter that
>> requirement drastically.
>>
>> We just managed to free up 150-200mb disk space (shared libs for
>> MB-System amongst others), and I will sponsor and take care of
>> adding an install_iris.sh script on the disc for the Nottingham
>> workshop if one is provided to me.
>>
>> you guys can figure out if you want an overview page for it or not
>> linked on the front page list of projects, but it's a bit of a
>> no-brainer to me to install the software and a quickstart (linked
>> or not) in the background regardless.
>>
>>
>> regards,
>> Hamish
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Geospatial Solutions Manager
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Sourcehttp://www.lisasoft.com
>
>
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