[Spanish] Re: [OSGeo-Standards] TMS and WMTS

[Luis W. Sevilla]

Well, now I'm in the right list, and following Arnulf's instruction 
'keep the discussion in standards list' I'm answering to only that list. 
(but still with a lot of CCs).

As it's quite most difficult to respect than to criticize, I force 
myself to take care not to deny efforts of anyone, specially if it's a 
group of people working together, even if the don't achieve they goals.

Around me not always people it's understanding, nor appreciating what's 
going on on OGC and OSGeo communities. But I have being involved (well, 
really more being there than pushing things) with both communities from 
2006. I was at Lausanne's Birds of a feather that discused TMS, 'cause I 
was personally intereste in the subject. I've being observing this 
subject to grow after google maps emergence (I know, they don't started, 
only popularized it), taking a look at NASA's, OSG Planet, Open Layers 
and how most web map client implementors used tiles. Until now there's 
no popular 'out of the box' solution for starting a tile server, not a 
formal standard. almost 4 years seems enough for that aspect to be fully 
covered.

Since then I've seen both communities to have an interesting (I think 
that respectful and appreciating too) approach and OSGeo is 
participating in TC Meetings. Writing specs it's not an easy thing, and 
every one (specially us, implementors) seems to believe that his 
personal perspective its good enough, but is not. Also standardization 
process needs constant improvement, this is why OSGeo community 
involvement in OGC it's so important.

We, the FLOSS business people, are the most interested people in 
interoperability standards to be successful, because this is a great way 
users may break vendor locks, and start to mix providers in a single 
installation. Of course, traditional vendors now that, and (I suspect) 
they try standards to be not too god, not too easy to implement, not too 
versatile.

I'm sure TMS process was as well as actors could push it. But seeing it 
with the perspective of the years, I think there are lessons to be learn 
for our former mistakes, misunderstandings or lack of success. There's a 
lot of work still to be done, and this community has the capability to 
be very important in the general Geo technologies fields,  not only in 
FLOSS one.

Let's look forward, determine what's still to be done in this 
standards/implementation mixed field, and go for it. Things should be 
better, of course, but they will be better if we target it.

Cheers
    Luis

PS. Sorry if I'm bothering anyone. I know there are here people with 
3+times more experience (and 10+times expertize) in the area, but I 
thought my contribution could be useful.
PS2. If something I try to write it's incomprehensible, please ask about 
it. I know my English need some improvements but it takes time

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> The whole sordid tiling affair can be read here.
>
>   http://lists.eogeo.org/pipermail/tiling/
>
> If anyone could comment on what "went wrong" it might be Raj, who was
> at the FOSS4G BoF that started the whole thing and on the mailing list
> during what passed for the "development process" in the fall of 2006.
>
> It's interesting that in the fall of 2007, when OGC had a draft in
> hand from CubeWerx it was still not possible for non-OGC members to
> see the draft until after it had been through the TC process.
>
> http://lists.eogeo.org/pipermail/tiling/2007-September/000294.html
>
> P.
>
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 7:01 AM, Luis W. Sevilla <lsevilla at sigrid.es> wrote:
>   
>> Hi, I'm not in the standards list and I haven't followed the discussion, so
>> sorry if this has being posted before.
>>
>> I tend to think that OGC it's a meeting for normalization (sort of
>> 'thinkers'), and OSGeo it's a meeting for software developers (mostly
>> 'doers'). Don't misunderstand me. We at OSGeo of course we're technology
>> thinkers, but not usually interoperability standard thinkers, and they, most
>> of them, are people in the 'knowledge' field, and try to describe how to cut
>> their field in standard pieces ready to be exchanged.
>> From my point of view the mistake at tiles was that only by writing a
>> schematic explanation and by implementing it you don't have and standard.
>> Only a (slightly) documented piece of software.
>>
>> The question that Arnulf posted yesterday was 'to find out what each of us
>> could have done to better integrate results and findings'. And I'm convinced
>> that OSGeo could have tried to understand better how the normalization
>> process works, looked for a couple of OGC members interested in tiles, and
>> write a more descriptive paper and send it to next OGC TC Meeting in the
>> form of discussion paper, for pushing the WMS modification.
>>
>> So, for next coming opportunities, I suggest as soon as we'll have some sort
>> of modification or improvement to a norm, we may write a Change/Requirement
>> Request in the specific norm, by means of this modification to be discussed
>> by OGC. Of course, if the CR it's binded with a piece of code that
>> implements the suggestion will be better.
>>
>> my two cents
>>
>> Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
>>     
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> Schuyler Erle wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> * On  6-Apr-2010 at  6:13PM EDT, Cameron Shorter said:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> Suggested improvement: The OGC should weight OGC testbed funding to
>>>>>  favour  Open Source implementations, as the implementations are
>>>>>  significantly more valuable to OGC sponsors and the greater GIS  community
>>>>> as the implementations are made available for free.
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> One last point: The OGC should take the final suggestion made by
>>>> Cameron very seriously.
>>>>
>>>> SDE
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Folks,
>>> thanks for the quick feedback.
>>>
>>> Testbed funding is pretty irrelevant in terms of helping us solve the
>>> communication issues with the OGC. The main OGC sponsors are proprietary
>>> software vendors. Tell me how Open Source implementations are
>>> significantly more valuable to them. :-) On top of this test bed work is
>>> rather boring, badly funded and has low recognition. But maybe I just
>>> miss a point here. Who wants to get testbed funding? Please ask me,
>>> maybe we can work something out, there are several interested EU projects.
>>>
>>> Let me add a quick note form my perspective. I was in the middle of
>>> trying to bridge between OGC and OSGeo around the tiling discussion.
>>> This culminated in an IRC chat with Chris Schmidt during an OGC plenary
>>> discussion and asking him whether the current take of the OGC's draft is
>>> implementable or not. He answered 20 minutes later: "Yes, I implemented
>>> it". That was cool. It just does not happen very often. But it shows
>>> that we are not half as disconnected as some suggestions might make us
>>> believe, except in our minds. And it always takes two sides to actually
>>> *want* to connect. The want-this bit on OSGeo's side lacks. This is not
>>> an opinion but my experience. Where does this frustration come from?
>>>
>>> I wonder whether OSGeo could also improve on something. All suggestions
>>> up to now point to the OGC needing to this or that. Let me ask back:
>>> What could OSGeo do to improve? It is not like the OSGeo tiling
>>> standards dominate the world, do they? If we really want to contribute
>>> to the standards world in a meaningful way we should take this serious
>>> and not just complain.
>>>
>>> If you ask: Who is the OGC? Then the answer is the same as for OSGeo:
>>> "Their respective members!" Now, who are the members of OGC? Believe me
>>> when I say that some more FOSS folks there would make me very happy. We
>>> have a MoU that gave us 6 OGC member slots for OSGeo folks and NONE of
>>> them are currently in use. That sucks.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Arnulf.
>>>
>>> PS:
>>> Most CC'd folks are on the standards list anyway so I dropped them.
>>>
>>> - --
>>> Arnulf Christl
>>>
>>> Exploring Space, Time and Mind
>>> http://arnulf.u
-- 
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