[Qgis-user] wishing for accurate lattitude/longitude from a cell phone

[j.huber at post-ist-da.de]

Hi,

while I agree that there are lots of bad examples of proprietary
formats, I want to say a few words to some of your examples:
It is true that OpenStreetMap data is difficult to handle -  this is not
because it is closed, but because it is open. When the project was
started the goal was to make it as easy as possible for people to
contribute to the dataset. Thus there are few restrictions which makes
it difficult to render or process the data. But the alternative would
probably have been to discuss the data format for years instead of
building an amazing open dataset...

While Garmin makes it difficult to upload custom maps to their units as
Nicolas wrote, many of their devices can be accessed as a USB drive and
waypoint/track data can simply be copied as .GPX-files. I have seen many
devices needing special software to transfer data, so this is actually easy.

When Google Earth first came to be, it was amazing - access to satellite
or aerial imagery had been expensive and difficult before. So I don't
have a problem with the fact that Google didn't make the data available
for everyone to use (probably license restrictions prohibit this).

Text files aren't often that simple - there are different encodings for
example which aren't advertised in the files, so you often have to guess
to get special characters right. They have no inbuilt validity checks,
so errors can not be easily recognised. In most use cases, structured
(XML) formats are preferable. And especially for large datasets, you get
much better performance and functionality using other formats like
Geopackage. The point in my opinion is that a format is open and well
documented.

Of course it is great if geodata is available to the public. In the EU,
there has been a lot of movement in the last years with more and more
data becoming available under open licenses, let's hope this continues.

Regards,
Jochen

Am 25.05.20 um 20:55 schrieb Falk Huettmann:
> Dear Chris et al,
>
> ...by using certain specific/clumsy formats -poorly documented ones -
> you can virtually exclude
> people from data and from Remote Sensing data and GPS etc.
> Google Earth as a  classic example, and GARMIN as another, or ESRI
> files, certainly NetCDF or many R packages even.
>
> In reality, you will see that all what is shiny and new - in demand-
> is to be sold, and usually not well publically shared.
> It takes many steps to get around it, if even that.
>
> While I have used OpenStreet maps, it was very clumsy; more bad
> examples exist, e.g. lack of metadata.
> Whatever companies tell ya, they want to sell more stuff (sell PR, or
> might face bankruptcy otherwise).
>
> And it is my hope that with QGIS we get to open access and open source,
> of these data, and any other.
>
> My format of choice is plain and simple ASCII text files for those
> reasons, perhaps using the 
> Virtual Machine as a platform forever (well, as long as that is
> reasonable, but not commercially driven).
>
> Keep me posted please; very best & thanks
>      Falk Huettmann
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 10:19 AM chris hermansen
> <clhermansen at gmail.com <mailto:clhermansen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Falk and list;
>
>     On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 10:48 AM Falk Huettmann
>     <fhuettmann at alaska.edu <mailto:fhuettmann at alaska.edu>> wrote:
>
>         Dear List,
>         I think these GPS high resolution suggestions are great; 
>         thanks.
>
>         But my real interest/question here is, how can we bring it
>         home to QGIS ?
>
>         I see GARMIN essentially trying to sell and impose on us their
>         GIS system,
>         same applies to OpenStreet Maps etc etc. So they try to
>         privatize geography and public space and information, 
>         which I am mostly opposed to.
>
>
>     How is OpenStreetMap (I assume when you say "OpenStreet Maps" you
>     mean "OpenStreetMap") trying "to privatize geography and public
>     space and information"?   Not trying to start an argument here;
>     this just seems completely contrary to what I know of
>     OpenStreetMap, whose data is licensed under
>     https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/
>
>
>         Instead, I wonder how we can use QGIS and release the commercial
>         data into Open Source and public use ?
>         That's for HIGH RESOLUTION data discussed here.
>
>         Thanks for such questions and solutions.
>
>
>     [stuff deleted]
>
>
>     -- 
>     Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com
>
>     C'est ma façon de parler.
>
>
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