[PROJ] OSGeo incubation status

[Martin Desruisseaux]

Le 24/01/2020 à 12:02, Kristian Evers a écrit :

>> Alternatively we need to convince IOPG to dual license the EPSG data 
>> under and DFSG compatible license.
>>
> This is obviously the best option. As far as I am aware all attempts 
> so far has been rejected by the IOGP. We can always try again, this 
> time including a thorough analysis of the effects of PROJ not being 
> able to provide access to the EPSG registry in a simple fashion. I 
> suspect that PROJ indirectly is by far one of the biggest consumers of 
> the registry. Maybe that can provide a bit of leverage?
>
I'm not sure that would be the best option. We are talking about 
something more like "open standards" here, which is not the same than 
"open source". There is some definition attempts about "open standards" 
on Wikipedia and elsewhere. The concept is quite young compared to "open 
source" so it is not yet well known. In essence "open standards" are 
very similar to "open source" except for the right to modify: "open 
standards" require modifications to be controlled by a standardization 
body, provided that the standardization process is free, 
non-discriminatory, etc. I think there is legitimate reasons for 
restriction about modifications; a standard is not standard anymore if 
anyone is free to modify it as they want. Hoping that projects will 
behave as good citizens, or that non-compliant projects will be at 
disadvantage compared to compliant projects, is not sufficient; it does 
not happen like that in practice (PROJ 4 itself was an example).

About consumers of EPSG database, I think that ESRI is also a large 
consumer. GeoTools/GeoServer have many users too. Finally Apache SIS has 
between 100,000 and 200,000 downloads per month from Maven Central (not 
counting Apache mirrors around the world) - but I suspect that most of 
those downloads are indirect downloads as dependency of more well known 
project like Apache Tika.

     Regards,

         Martin