[Qgis-developer] Fwd: [Board] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?

Sat May 4 13:09:33 PDT 2013

Personal opinions in a nutshell:

>From an OGC perspective (yes I'm a member via NIWA's affiliation - once I pay the current bill :-)

This is not a genuine attempt to improve interoperability & support open standards, it is an attempt to undermine open standards & replace existing open standards which are widely used & supported in the community by ratifying standards currently used by one commercial vendor.

I'm currently responsible for implementing federated (interoperable) systems between research agencies & central/regional govt based on OGC standards. It these standards provide for disparate ways of doing the same thing, then "OGC standards compliant: will mean one of two things:
- may or may not work together depending on which OGC standards are supported
- everyone has to support both standards to be OGC compliant.

My organisation has been quoted a few 10's of thousands of $ to develop a CSW service for ESRI datstores because, despite their claimed support for these standards - it is pretty minimal & of limited functionality & use. 

At present we can build federated, interoperable systems including CSW, SOS, WMS, WCS, WFS, etc, and if an agency fails to interoperate, that is their problem. This change would fundamentally reduce, if not destroy, the value of OGC standards to the wider community. 

>From an OSGEO perspective (I'm in the Australia/NZ chapter)

This weakens the FOSS community & strengthens ESRI's place in the global GIS community. OSGEO is there (IMHO) to support FOSS GIS. Agreeing to a change which gives a commercial competitor a strategic advantage - giving them a mandate to let the FOSS community play catchup for a couple of years - is NOT in the best interests of the FOSS community.

>From a FOSS perspective (I'm a council member of the NZOSS),

This is pretty much a repeat of Microsoft's refusal to support an existing, community based XML document/file standard & their forcing of a competing standard on the community, which has been of no value to the user community & created problems for the FOSS community.

We should learn from that fiasco & not make the same mistake again, as much as it in our power to prevent it. 

Regards,

  Brent Wood

--- On Sat, 5/4/13, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:

From: Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>
Subject: [Qgis-developer] Fwd: [Board] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
To: "qgis-developer" <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013, 11:06 PM

FYI. For what I can understand, this could be a damage to QGIS.

Opinions?

Da: Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>

Inviato il: Sat May 04 12:46:33 CEST 2013

A: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>

Cc: standards at lists.osgeo.org, OSGeo-Board <board at lists.osgeo.org>

Oggetto: [Board] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?

OSGeo Community,

Currently, voting OGC members are to decide whether to accept the 
"GeoServices REST API" as an OGC standard. This is already a contentious 
issue, with 13 votes for, and 10 votes against, 72 outstanding votes, 
with voting halted temporally, being reopened again in a few days, and 
closing 2 weeks after that. [1]

I'm wanting to hear whether people in the OSGeo community have strong 
opinions regarding this proposed standard, and whether we as a 
collective OSGeo community should make statements to the OGC, and voting 
OGC members, stressing our thoughts.

If there is sufficient interest, I'll raise this issue with the OSGeo 
Board, with the intent of drafting a statement on behalf of OSGeo.

As background:
* "The API was initially developed by Esri and implemented on the ArcG
 IS 
for Server platform." [2]

* The proposed GeoServices REST API specification overlaps with most OGC 
standards already deployed, including: WMS, WMTS, WCS, WFS, SE/SLD, 
CS/W. This effectively means that for most use cases covered by the 
GeoServices REST API, applications would now have two standards to 
support. Also, spatial infrastructure programs will be impacted, as OGC 
compliance won't necessarily equate to interoperability.

* Most (all?) current OGC web service standards to date have an Open 
Source reference implementation, which was often (always?) part funded 
by OGC testbeds, and open source implementations were tested against 
proprietary implementations during OGC testbeds. As far as I'm aware, 
there has been very little up-take from the Open Source community of the 
"GeoServices REST API", and I'm unaware of any testing of non-ESRI 
applications during OGC testbeds. (Someone may be 
 able to
correct me here).

[1] 
https://portal.opengeospatial.org/?m=projects&a=view&project_id=82&tab=5&subtab=0
(OGC member login required. Votes counted as at 4 May 2013)

[2] http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/89

-- 
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 Source
http://www.lisasoft.com

Board mailing list
Board at lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board

-- 

http://faunalia.it/pc

Sorry for being short
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