[Proj] Use of SQLite

[Howard Butler]

On 5/21/18 11:11 AM, Martin Desruisseaux wrote:
> This topic has been discussed (in a wider context - not specifically
> EPSG) in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). They came with the
> definition of Open Standard, which is similar to Open Source Software
> but not identical. The OGC API white paper [1] defines an Open Standard as:
>
>  1. Freely and publicly available – They are available free of charge
>     and unencumbered by patents and other intellectual property.
>  2. Non discriminatory – They are available to anyone, any organization,
>     any time, anywhere with no restrictions.
>  3. No license fees - There are no charges at any time for their use.
>  4. Vendor neutral - They are vendor neutral in terms of their content
>     and implementation concept and do not favor any vendor over another.
>  5. Data neutral – The standards are independent of any data storage
>     model or format.
>  6. Defined, documented, and approved by a formal, member driven
>     consensus process. The consensus group remains in charge of changes
>     and no single entity controls the standard.
>
> Note that above definitions does not include the right to modify the
> standard; the changes are controlled by a standard body. The reason is
> that if anyone was allowed to change a standard, then it would not be a
> standard any more. Note that this definition of "Open Standard" has been
> done collaboratively with OSGeo [2].
>
>

The situation at the moment is projects (Debian, GDAL, SIS) and
commercial entities (see ESRI's approach) must actively work around the
licensing of the EPSG database, and some projects such as Debian will
never be allowed to do so without a modification of the existing
licensing terms. What value does the current licensing regime provide
users of the EPSG database?

> my understanding is that their main concern is to make sure that everyone interpret EPSG codes in the same way. 

Any open source software developer knows the way to get everyone arguing
about everything *but* the thing you wish them to agree upon is to
specify it in licensing terms :) These terms are never going to prevent
software implementations from disagreeing on interpretations. If EPSG
wishes for such open interpretation enforcement, they should instead
chose a copyleft license to require everyone to provide source for their
interpretations. The database and the software(s) that implement its
transforms are compliments, but the licensing terms significantly
disrupt the relationship. To what end?

Thanks for relaying the information Martin. It is IOGP and EPSG that we
need to be communicating with here. If there are commercial
organizations who can help us explicitly make the case why the current
licensing is problematic, we would like to hear from you.

Howard

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