The part that bothers me the most about this has to do with the big picture. I'm concerned that if we focus on this or that standard without putting it into the larger context that poor(bad?) decisions are getting made that set precedents for more bad decisions to follow.

This had been touched on buy the other responses. There are plenty of standards the are defacto because companies have published them and they have been widely adopted across their respective industry and this is goodness, but I'm not sure that it is justification for making it a "standard" unless it meets the goals and objects of the standard's body that wants to adopt it.

I think it would be very divisive to fracture and dilute the momentum that we have finally achieved with the WxS standards, unless there is clearly a need to grow beyond what exists today that can not be achieved by growing WxS in a compatible way.

-Steve

On 5/6/2013 11:11 AM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
I am also of the opinion that "single-vendor standards" such as KML and
this GeoServices REST API are turning OGC into a rubber-stamping
organization and this is not what the geospatial community needs. Don't
get me wrong, it is good to see these openly published, but the
publication should be by their owners (Google and ESRI in those case)
and not be rubber-stamped by OGC.

What the geospatial community needs is an organization that provides
direction around a consistent set of standards that guarantee
interoperability between interchangeable software components.

The suite of WxS services built over the last 10-15 years is somewhat on
the way of achieving this, even if some pieces still do not interoperate
as smoothly as we wish. Is OGC trying to tell the world that it no
longer believes in WxS?

OGC and its members need to decide whether they want the OGC logo to be
perceived as the "guarantee of interoperability", or just as a
rubber-stamping organization with a large portfolio of inconsistent
standards.

Whether your source is open or closed is out of the question here, so I
am not sure that a statement from OSGeo matters unless it is to point at
this obvious slippery slope in which OGC is falling (a movement which
started with KML a few years ago).

Daniel



On 13-05-06 3:41 AM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
All,
Having read this thread I support what has been said by Adrian, Bruce
and others. If anything, acceptance of a set of standards that
basically replicates what W*S standards already do will confuse
customers. Maybe that is exactly what esri hopes to achieve, it
definitely doesn't help our (the geospatial community) business. And
as Bruce states, it will have serious impact on the OGC credibility.
As OSGeo I can imagine that we then decide to start our own
standardization process and build a standards brand around OSGeo
products. Not a nice perspective, let's hope OGC won't go down that
route.
Jeroen

On 6 mei 2013, at 01:08, bruce.bannerman.osgeo
<bruce.bannerman.os...@gmail.com> wrote:

Cameron,

My personal opinion is that if this proposal was accepted, it would
be a bad move for OGC.

Remember that OGC is a community and its Technical Committee
membership are the people who vote on the acceptance of Standards.
The TC comprises many different organisations.


I do understand that OGC are trying to be inclusive in their
processes and to try and cater for alternative approaches to a
problem, much the same as OSGeo does in supporting multiple projects
that essentially handle similar use cases (e.g. GeoServer, MapServer
and Degree).

I have also personally witnessed ESRI's commitment to helping to
further the development of Open Spatial Standards through their work
on OGC Working Groups and at OGC Technical Committee meetings.

ESRI also have made a valid point in their response to the 'NO' vote
for the GeoServices REST API that the OGC has already allowed
alternate approaches with the acceptance of netCDF as a data format
and KML as a combined data/presentation format.

With the GeoServices REST API, I think that the approach proposed:

- is very divisive for the OGC community.
- essentially appears to propose an alternate way for working with
spatial services that does not utilise or build on the W*S suite of
services that have been developed through robust community processes
for in excess of a decade.
- does not provide REST bindings to the W*S suite of standards that
have been widely implemented in a range of software.
- will result in confusion within the user community that are trying
to utilise 'OGC' services.


If this approach were to be adopted, I believe that OGC will go too
far down the alternate solution approach and will risk losing its
public acceptance as one of the key leaders of open spatial standards.


I'm interested in hearing other OSGeo members opinions as to how this
proposal would affect their projects.

Would you consider implementing the GeoServices REST API within your
projects?

If you did, would you maintain support for both it and traditional
W*S services?

Bruce

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