[OSGeo-Standards] OGC vote on LAS 1.4 as a community standard

[Howard Butler]

> On Jan 30, 2017, at 11:00 AM, Carl Reed <carl.n.reed at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Howard -
> 
> Some clarification on GeoRSS. As one of the original 5 who defined and documented GeoRSS, I disagree with some of your statements. The OGC had zero (0) input or oversight of the GeoRSS development. Sure, at the time Raj and I were OGCs staff and the others were OGC members. And later, others (non OGC) joined the discussion. The group decided to define GeoRSS outside the OGC process - but still based on the consensus of the group. There were never any license or IP issues. GeoRSS was released under CC Attribution ShareAlike 2.5.  The original GeoRSS collaborators recently agreed to move to CC Attribution ShareAlike 4.0. Under the OGC Community Standard P&P there is no (zero) requirement to transfer ownership or intellectual property to the OGC - just the rights as per CC 4.0. Further, there is no requirement for the OGC to take over maintenance. Finally, there is no requirement for normative changes to the document - unless an error is encountered.
> 
> The GeoRSS White Paper I wrote back in 2006 or so has a detailed history of the development and final deployment of the GeoRSS spec: http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=15755

The question was never about the IP of the document, and my contention was never about you or Raj's contributions as OGC staff to it. My complaint was the authority OGC had over promulgating any changes by pulling it under its umbrella outweighed the open group's. That itself wasn't a big deal except for the fact that at the time there was no way for unaffiliated individuals to participate in any further iteration of the document within OGC. These issues (individual working group participation, open source participation) have since been fixed, but at the time they had me and a few others blowing off. A little too much for myself, I must regrettably add.

GeoJSON developed when, where, and how it did as a reaction to that. It is encouraging that OGC is nurturing more open approaches like has been happening with GeoPackage, which otherwise might have been yet another outside-the-org specification without improvements in how OGC was allowed to operate.

I'm encouraged by OGC looking to adopt LAS as a community standard so long as it commits to not iterating the document itself. OGC has said exactly that in many forums. The ASPRS LAS committee's authority to iterate the document, such as it is, shouldn't be overshadowed. As a practical matter, there might be one more squeeze of the tube left to address some lingering issues, but it won't be an innovation center going forward anyway. 

I hope OGC's Point Cloud Working Group focuses on web services for point clouds, and with the LAS recognition, it stays out of the point cloud formats fray. Web services are something with which OGC has lots of experience and its community actively use. It just so happens my company has an excellent full stack of open source approach that I think would be an excellent place to start. See my OGC PCWG talk about principles here https://vimeo.com/183815123 or my recent ASPRS GeoBytes seminar about the actual implementation at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/1047966902964876033

Howard