[OSGeo-Standards] [OSGeo-Discuss] Live DVD and OGC standards

[Allan Doyle]

On Jul 8, 2013, at 1:38 PM, Carl Reed <creed at opengeospatial.org>
 wrote:

> Allan -
> 
> I respectfully disagree with your comment regarding the authors not wanting to bring GeoRSS into the OGC. I know that Raj, myself and other original authors would support bringing GeoRSS into the OGC as is. 

You're right, I'm sorry. I did not mean to misrepresent. My memory is hazy on who was on what side.

I think at the time my arguments against were primarily due to OGC's process and position on intellectual property rights. 

At the time, the process entailed long periods of document revision within working groups during which the document was not allowed to be made public. What eventually came out the other side would not become public until after the TC (a) voted to adopt the spec and (b) finished the process of addressing any comments that may have come up during debate about adoption. I don't know whether the process has been streamlined since then.

Also at the time, another objection I had was that OGC was either in the process or had already handed off some number of specs to ISO where they are now available under ISO copyright for a fee. I think this included things like the Simple Features abstract spec (now ISO 19107) and the metadata model (now ISO 19115). The very fact that OGC was willing to take the hard work of the members and hand it to ISO where it would be sold was quite a sore point with me.

I also firmly believe that the existence of "indie" specs that are successful can be inspirational to people who would not otherwise have thought of working on specs.

If you think there is still a benefit to GeoRSS in running it through the OGC process, then I'll withdraw my objection. However, any changes would necessitate bumping up the version number and probably the namespace ID.

	Allan

> 
> The idea that the OGC process would significantly change something like GeoRSS is untrue. A good recent example is Open GeoSMS. That candidate standard was developed externally and submitted into the OGC. The normative content was not changed at all other than making one tag consistent with some IETF RFCs (HELD, LoST, etc). We also separated the normative text from the informative examples (primer) which made the standard very short and easier to understand. Additional "eyes" on a document does not necessarily mean any normative change but does mean improvement to the document (grammar, wording, clarity, etc).
> Cheers
> 
> Carl
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arnulf Christl" <arnulf.christl at metaspatial.net>
> To: standards at lists.osgeo.org, "TC Discuss" <tc-discuss at lists.opengeospatial.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 8, 2013 9:11:27 AM
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Standards] [OSGeo-Discuss] Live DVD and OGC standards
> 
> On 08.07.2013 14:14, Rushforth, Peter wrote:
>> Hi Allan,
>> 
>>> The counter-example is actually GeoTIFF, which was proposed 
>>> as an OGC format a long, long time ago, by the original 
>>> authors of the spec. At the time, it was rejected 
>>> specifically because the TC felt that OGC should not be 
>>> standardizing file specs, but rather should be standardizing 
>>> interfaces.
>> 
>> Ironic, because the strength of the Web is based on 'file' specs.  The
>> geo community needs to think less about interfaces and more about
>> how to communicate state through "files".
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Peter
> 
> Peter,
> so true, I couldn't agree more. Why is it that there is a perception
> that the OGC should not work on data formats but only interfaces? Is
> this still the case? With GML and KML there are two strong existing data
> standards. GeoPackage is not exactly "just" a media format but ships
> with code - an ideal package so to say, and by any means not just an
> interface standard.
> 
> GeoRSS and GeoJSON would not be hard to go forward with but for some
> reason it never happened.
> 
> Cheers,
> Arnulf
> 
> -- 
> Arnulf Christl (Executive Director)
> Open Source Geospatial Software, Data and Services
> http://www.metaspatial.net
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