Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OGC liaison memberships
Hey all, On the front of becoming one of the liaison members, I would appreciate guidance on procedure. Do we generate a formal letter to me and the OGC or do we not yet have any procedure for this? I have just now asked Barbara Sherman of the OGC if she is aware of any procedure on her end. I would like to get this squared away quickly and easily. On the front of OSGeo building deeper ties with the OGC and, perhaps becoming a voting member someday, I think we should move forwards on a number of fronts jointly. The first is clearly discussion and openness, letting Carl, the head of the TC and Mark, the president of the OGC both know that this is something we are seeking and towards which we plan to work. A second front might be to become more active on the Standards Front. There has been some recent interest in OSGeo taking on some Standards related activity, where certainly being vocal and offering productive critiques could be productive. It may also prove useful to do more. For example, I am planning to write up a number of format standards in the next six months and so it might make sense for me to develop some of them within OSGeo. The standards would require buy in from this community anyhow, so perhaps developing them here would give this community some more leverage in the Standards game. I'll do the bulk of the work first and then get back to you all on whether they make sense at OSGeo and how they could start life here. In the interim, OSGeo might consider how it could host 'standards focused projects' rather than 'software focused projects' or 'community focused projects'. I'm not sure that requires more work than agreeing it should be allowed. It could be part of 'labs' to stay informal or some other procedure might be invented. cheers, ~adrian On 5/31/13 8:25 AM, Jeff McKenna wrote: On 2013-05-30 5:57 PM, Michael Gerlek wrote: Adrian showed himself to be a level-headed and rational discoursant during the recent kerfuffle. If Adrian is willing, I'd support a motion to put him in charge of, or at least a member of, some sort of effort to engage with OGC to find out the Best Way Forward for our two organizations. I think Arnulf and I are the current gatekeepers of OGC things, such as it is; I'd of course be happy to continue to help here, and I'm sure Arnulf would too. I strongly agree with this plan. The recent happenings have seemed to bring the OGC and OSGeo closer, and I feel Adrian can really help us communicate. -jeff ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OGC liaison memberships
On 5/30/13 2:54 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote: Adrian, According to http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OGC_membership we have open slots. It seems that Arnulf and Michael can authorize it. There are some fairly restrictive conditions on OGC individual memberships which is what this is. You should confirm you are going to fit. http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/join/level/individual Indeed that is my current status: the 'you can do all the work but can't vote' level of membership. It isn't clear that these memberships imply you exactly speak for OSGeo though you can certainly give your affiliation as OSGeo. Right. I could only 'speak for OSGeo' on any particular topic when, after discussion, OSGeo has formulated one, or probably several, positions on any issues. In general I would speak as 'one of the horde of free software actors'. It would be wonderful to use this mechanism to give you standing at OGC as I know you will make good use of it. Thanks. Best regards, Frank ~adrian On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:13 AM, Adrian Custer wrote: Hey all, As I remember it, OSGeo has been granted a number of liaison memberships (six?) from the OGC. Are they all being used? If not, what would be the process to obtain one? In past years, I have been reluctant to officially represent OSGeo and so have paid for a membership on my own. Nonetheless, I have been pushing the OGC on openness, the consideration of free software, and issues arising from the 'OSGeo point of view' ever since I started participating at the OGC. I have also been acting unofficially as a bridge between the two organizations (with the good and bad that comes from that such as, in the last few days, being unable to announce the end of the 'GeoServices REST' debacle). Now I am considering making this work and my association between the two organizations more formal. Therefore, if you all are willing, and if a membership were available, I would like to take this on as a formal role and represent all of you at the OGC. It would mean I would show up to meetings and sign my authorship of whatever documents with the affiliation 'OSGeo'. In the future, I also would plan to lobby the OGC to grant OSGeo a formal vote in the proceedings of the technical committee. That will be hard to obtain since we will not be pitching in the mega-cash that the OGC needs to sustain their way of operating; however, it might be possible someday, especially if we start contributing effectively to their work. Sincerely, Adrian Custer __**_ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/**mailman/listinfo/discuss<http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss> ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] OGC liaison memberships
Hey all, As I remember it, OSGeo has been granted a number of liaison memberships (six?) from the OGC. Are they all being used? If not, what would be the process to obtain one? In past years, I have been reluctant to officially represent OSGeo and so have paid for a membership on my own. Nonetheless, I have been pushing the OGC on openness, the consideration of free software, and issues arising from the 'OSGeo point of view' ever since I started participating at the OGC. I have also been acting unofficially as a bridge between the two organizations (with the good and bad that comes from that such as, in the last few days, being unable to announce the end of the 'GeoServices REST' debacle). Now I am considering making this work and my association between the two organizations more formal. Therefore, if you all are willing, and if a membership were available, I would like to take this on as a formal role and represent all of you at the OGC. It would mean I would show up to meetings and sign my authorship of whatever documents with the affiliation 'OSGeo'. In the future, I also would plan to lobby the OGC to grant OSGeo a formal vote in the proceedings of the technical committee. That will be hard to obtain since we will not be pitching in the mega-cash that the OGC needs to sustain their way of operating; however, it might be possible someday, especially if we start contributing effectively to their work. Sincerely, Adrian Custer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] project not found in list
Hey, On 5/19/13 8:17 PM, Gabriel Morin wrote: I found the incubation list you mentioned, thanks : gvSIG ,Marble ,MetaCRS ,Opticks ,pycsw ,rasdaman ,TEAM Engine ,ZOO-Project Sorry I was mistaken thinking osgeo was promoting all the geospatial open > source projets. > I hear so much about it I was thinking it was the case, but it's a > groupement like apache and eclipse. Yes, OSGeo has been primarily focused on its own projects and historically has been weak at recognizing and promoting other efforts. Now that spatial has become ubiquitous it is more obvious that there is great work going on in lots of different places. The R statistical library, for example, has done a huge amount of work on spatial analysis over the past decade but does not get mentioned much. More recently, the Eclipse foundation has started a major push as well and there are many new projects online. OSGeo is one player among many others and is slowly being forced to recognize that. OSGeo might eventually change from seeing its role as promoting itself and its projects to taking on an expanded role of promoting all the geospatial software that provides its users with various freedoms. Unfortunately, the organization has been structured around insiders and outsiders in its membership and its projects so that split has become a deep part of its psyche---it will be hard for OSGeo to complete such a change though many are willing. from what you say I should go see the apache project then, mdweb is > build on geotoolkit and you say it's part of Apache. Mdweb is at http://www.mdweb-project.org/ It is its own project and not, to my knowledge, under any other organizational umbrella. GeoToolkit originally wanted to remain part of OSGeo but was not accepted. It has recently become an Apache project. We used plenty of apache projects in formation, so it should be fine :) I have download geotools an geotoolkit but they don't look the same, is it really a fork ? Yes there was a fork. Geotools, after a first life as an applet toolkit, set out to become a general purpose geospatial library. However, the project become dominated by developers working on the proprietary GeoServer project. The fork that retained the name is now essentially a library in support of that server and releases only when a new release of the server is due. GeoToolkit followed on towards the original goal. In order to establish itself as a project independent of any company, it went searching for an umbrella organization and has now found that in Apache. The differences in the code bases follow from the differences in ambitions. One fork is more concerned with getting things working, and so advances rapidly. The other fork more concerned with getting things working right and so focused more on standardization and rigorous test suites. Both are good projects and cover a great deal of the geospatial so, if they suit your needs, should be a good to work against. In your case, many core developers on GeoToolkit are in France and speak French, which you might find helpful or fun. salut, ~adrian thanks for the help. gabriel De : Frank Warmerdam À : Gabriel Morin Cc : "discuss@lists.osgeo.org" Envoyé le : Lundi 20 mai 2013 0h07 Objet : Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] project not found in list On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Gabriel Morin wrote: Hello sir I am currently a trainee in a city hall for a few months and I have to work with several map and metadata tools. In my formation we have used a bit of mapserver and amoung the documents the osgeo web site was mentioned for documentation and help. But I can not found any of the tools I work with on the site, that is MDWeb and OpenJump. plenty of other names of tools we have heard about are also missing, like Drupal, GvSIg, GeoToolkit, WorldWind, Osmosis. Gabriel, The Projects and Incubating Projects list on the OSGeo web site is intended to list direct projects of OSGeo, not all open source or even open source geospatial projects. I'm not familiar with MDWeb, but OpenJump can be found at: http://www.openjump.org/ Drupal is not geospatial, and I assume you can find the project page if you need to. gvSIG is listed on the OSGeo page, but in the "Incubating Projects" list. GeoToolkit is a fork of the OSGeo GeoTools project. I think it is now an Apache project. WorldWind is I believe directly administered by NASA (not too sure), and I'm not certain about Osmosis which I assume is OSM related. There are many projects which I consider "friends of OSGeo" in the sense that they are often used in conjunction with OSGeo projects or by folks who are involved in OSGeo but that are not actually projects of OSGeo. I often recommend these, and they are discussed at conferences like FOSS4G. Actually it looks like there is only a very restricted list in the osgeo. Why is that ? I hope my respo
[OSGeo-Discuss] OGC 'GeoServices REST API' SWG published their responses to comments
Hello all, For those of you interested in this debacle, I have just uploaded the two response documents from the Standards Working Group proposing "GeoServices REST API" for adoption as an OGC Standards. They can be found at the end of: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoservices_REST_API#Criticism_and_Response cheers, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The OGC: clueless, uncaring, and still rocking to Prince.
Hello, What a decent mail. Thanks. All these topics sound good but each is worth its own detailed discussion. Some might be fascinating and they would then take a while and getting each started productively would be hard. Face to face, it might be different: quicker, easier to skip ahead, possible to find the interesting bits. Probably, I'd learn a lot. Unlike you, I doubt we disagree about that much on the technological side; more likely, we are considering different target audiences, with different restrictions, and have a different vision of the solution space. But then, I would rather spend that time elsewhere, like on trying to address issues with an existing OGC standard. Also, it would be hard for me to figure out effective language in response to so many paragraphs starting with the first person pronoun and setting up confrontation rather than building room for exploration. So perhaps face-to-face someday, where it would be possible to see if we could discuss productively, but not now and by text. Thanks for the offer. The personal offense is minor, not worth dwelling on. Your vision of the OGC is still puzzling but really I don't care. The OGC will make lots of mistakes, write lots of crummy standards, and so on. If adopting ESRI's pet standard destroys the OGC and all open geospatial standards with it, then so be it; they were too fragile to begin with. But I think it won't. Whatever happens, the OGC will survive, open standards are still needed, and life will go on. Ultimately, the OGC is just a bunch of people trying to get a good basis for agreement down on paper and then a bunch of organizations voting on whatever is produced. The people do their best; the organization vote their interests. That kind of setup lives or dies by the quality of the people in it. Thankfully there are some good people so there is some stuff of good quality in the mix. So, to the crux of your vent, it actually turns out that many are aware of most of the issues you mention, and several are actually trying to address them. So before throwing out some solution and spewing about why the OGC hasn't adopted it already, it might be more productive to ask: 'hey this problem seems kind obvious to me, have you all seen it and figured out how to tackle it?' Then, it might even turn out that there is work being done at the OGC, at a particular scale and pace due to the circumstances of that work. But the 'someone should do something the way I want it done already' doesn't really work in much of the world I have seen. hoping our paths do cross someday, ciao, ~adrian On 5/12/13 10:45 PM, rburhum wrote: Dear Adrian, I recently saw a reply that you made to a blog post I wrote recently. Although the criticism were meant to be directed to the *OGC* as an *organization*, I can tell by your comments, descriptions and overall tone, that you felt *personally* attacked and offended. You have my sincere apologies if you felt that way. This was never meant to be a personal attack. I would be happy to elaborate, with far more detail, each single one of my comments/points. We can do this either publicly or in a private e-mail exchange (whatever you feel is best). Based on your responses though, I have to admit that we have fundamental disagreements in several aspects – and some serious ones at that. - I would be happy to discuss XML vs JSON vs MessagePack conversations and why the first of those is (lately) not adopted by any modern API. JSON is the real winnder nowadays (for good reasons). In terms of serialization frameworks, MessagePack has implementations in Ruby/Python/Perl/C/C++/Java/Scala/PHP/Lua/JavaScript/Node.js/Haskell/C#/Objective-C/Erlang/D/OCaml/Go/LabVIEW/SmallTalk/etc. I dare to say it is “somewhat” supported. - I would be happy to discuss why security is more than certificate exchange or username/password submission during requests. - I would be happy to discuss why complexity of specifications hinders adoption. There are technical reasons why geojson and mbtiles are gaining traction without much effort and GML is not. (Much love to all my friends that were involved with GML – I apologize if this offends you). - I would be happy to discuss why I think SQL (SQL:1999, or SQL:2003, or SQL:2008 or SQL:2011) is a better choice for an API than a full fledged OGC query language that tries to abstract querying. As a side comment, you are correct at thinking that my reasoning here came from experience. Around 10 years ago I was sitting at my ESRI office and a co-worker came into the office and asked me for help since he was in charge of implementing one of the OGC WFS version specs. The nicest thing that I can tell you is that “it was painful and unreasonable in many regards” and that it ended up requiring to hire an “OGC consultant” to try to implement the spec as close as possible (to *explain* – not to implement) - I would be happy to accept the fact that OGC does no
[OSGeo-Discuss] The OGC: clueless, uncaring, and still rocking to Prince.
to how they could work for server to server communication. Todo, bye and bye. "HTTPS" Okay, now the critique has shifted to how deployments are done. Not my issue. Great video! Yeah, all the OGC security stuff that does not start with getting certificates to users is pretty broken; assuming the browser will come with a proper system for that is indeed stupid. Good to see how broken things are though, after that, you can't skip it. (Forwards to Anderas). SPDY No Way! Someone has invented something better than HTTP!? Impossible. A line based, textual message must be the most efficient way of doing things. Well, no, but it sure is easy to implement, hence well, the web. SPDY extensions will be fun; once we know how to separate the protocol specific from the rest. Hence modularization, hence the work that the OGC actually *is* doing. "Non-blocking servers" Well if the OGC bends over backwards to avoid dictating implementations, it is exactly so they can implement servers any way they like. What does this comment do for anyone? "specs should be about ... the future" Yes, I made a similar point recently, didn't I? Specs should concieve of their lifespan. Still, predicting the future is a fool's errand. So its more that specs should define a really good basis today on which the future is easy to graft. Hence modularity, hence what the OGC actually *is* doing. Why, why, why? WebSQL - no clue, don't know if it was any good. Probably clashed with the wave of NoSQL hype at just the wrong time. Spatial DVCS - ah! Indeed. One of the great questions of the day. G.R. seems to be pushing forwards on that, albeit without separating the particular DVCS from the fundamental problem. Hopefully, he'll make lots of progress and we can learn from his mistakes. The open question of course is what is the unit of geospatial data, akin to the line of text, and can we find a provably optimal diff for that unit. Why doesn't the OGC solve the problem? Well that's obvious, it doesn't know how. Nor does anyone, yet. Why hasn't physics gotten past the point charge? Ah, math... Web stateful connections- I don't get the question, need, intent. Next. Highly compressed geometries- No one has seen the need and done the work. Editing capabilities- fucking hard to do; no one has done it. Temporal- ah, the poor neglected child of GIS. So the short answer is because there was lots of progress to be made without it. Low hanging fruit and all that. The longer answer is the model of General Features and the fundamental relations of Feature properties. That, however, is the subject of a long discussion, one that is only worth having when I have the software to manipulate the model and show it working. Carthage, which came, then went, then is again; if we make a single feature, how do we represent its attributes? Does a feature still have properties duirng its time of non-existance? MBTiles - yeah, its great. You want to use their one service, with their one data model, over the web, that's a good solution. Interoperability is a different ball game, different scale, different set of issues. Small and targeted can be quick and simple; the OGC is playing a different game. So, that's his rant. It's kind of annoying as these things are but at least has a bit of content mixed in with the confusion. Clarifying the confusion won't happen over the network, not with the vehemence of the position expressed. Actually discussing what the OGC *does* won't help much either. So, what's my take-away? * there are some cool projects around binary serialization for messaging, => look into Protocol Buffers and derivatives, Web Sockets * security by communication is risky; all secure communication based designs really still need to start with certificate distribtuion, => mail Andreas/OGC Security raising the cert. exchange issue again. * we need to clarify better what the OGC does not do, => figure out a way to express this protocol situation. * modularization and better written standards is still the best way forwards for the documents, => get back at it you lazy slog. * the 'reference implementation' term needs to die at the OGC, until we have software which is really acting as an r.i., => lean on Luis some more * we need to talk more about what the OGC actually is doing these days, why progress has been slow, so maybe I *should* be talking about my work more despite talking about
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The OSGeo response to the proposed "GeoServices REST API" document [was: Would you be concerned ...]
On 5/10/13 12:25 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote: Adrian Custer wrote: On 5/9/13 2:33 PM, Tim Bowden wrote: On Thu, 2013-05-09 at 13:20 -0300, Adrian Custer wrote: Hey Cameron, all, ... * The letter is only rejection of the proposal without offering an alternative way forwards. I strongly suspect the proposed standard would have received a much better reception from the broader OSGeo community (with the diverse viewpoints it typically has) if the proposal was more that a "take it or leave it" (partial?) description of what ESRI has done and is going to do anyway. Out of curiosity, how does this compare to the process by which KML became an OGC standard? That was the first really contentious issue I experienced at the OGC. It is related to the current situation in that the KML experience seems to have encouraged ERSI to try to push GeoServices through. However, I did not much care at the time so I did not follow the issues and controversy. I gather there was a feeling that KML duplicated other standards at the OGC and mixed data with presentation in a poorly structured way. I also vaguely remember that there was more of a feeling that Google really wanted to hand off the standard to the OGC. But again, I am not sure about any of this; I have never even seen a KML document. ~adrian This is a good example of the limits of governance at the OGC. Really, a standard should not pass when there is concerted opposition to it. The process is designed to suspend when there is opposition (2 no votes), in an effort to build consensus. However, the ultimate decision is still a 50% + 1 vote; probably, it should be a super-majority of some kind. I've always found the OGC process to be rather broken. But then I'm a big fan of the IETF approach - bottom up, "rough consensus and running code," a progression from experimental to recommended to mandatory, but only after a long incubation period - and don't even think of using the word standard until there are at least 2 interoperable implementations. Miles Fidelman ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] Evolving FOSS4G [was: FOSS4G 2013 Nottingham Update ]
Hey all, Congratulations and good wishes to the organizers of FOSS4G 2013, and many thanks for all the hard work. I'm sure the attendees (unfortunately, probably not me) will benefit greatly. This critique is not actually directed towards you; it is towards all of us and probably really for 2014 or later. We need to evolve FOSS4G to make it more effective at doing all the disparate things it is attempting to accomplish. The dissatisfaction expressed in the original mailing list thread, which I have shared for years now, reflects a tension that is becoming increasingly deep. The FOSS4G community has grown up. The feel in Lausanne was of a hacker conference, a bunch of young developers and users building and learning from each other how to make and use software for a better tomorrow. Users, developers, everyone was on an equal footing. By Barcelona that feeling had changed; there were 'presenters' and 'audiences', the commercial side was strong. Formal recognition came primarily to those 'presenting'; certain projects or companies were visibly 'blessed' mostly because they were either the first movers or were within the OSGeo umbrella, others were excluded or simply absent. As a consequence, the conference was more professional and was was probably more effective at presenting each project that gave a talk but it lost a lot as well, it had less community feel, was less whacky, favoured the commercial over the free-time projects, was more exclusive. This is obviously partly that we have all changed. 'Free software' is now fully legimate, 'Open standards' are increasingly the accepted norm, software exists for most of our basic needs with new stuff is coming out all the time. However, if organizers want to build a FOSS4G which builds communitarian spirit as well as being professional, which gives center stage to mature products but invites the whacky as well, which brings in everyone rather than blessing winners and excluding others, FOSS4G needs to evolve its design. Easy to say, the question is 'how?'. Well, first, let's get a better handle on the tension, the why, then I'll throw out some ideas about how to address it. Who are the FOSS4Gers? We are a mixed bunch and probably each of us is a mix of these labels. However, I build up mythical single purpose 'geo-actors' to be able to get a list of different needs. I surely have missed some labels as well, but have hit many and thereby have gathered a diverse list of principles. The Geo-doers, those actually doing stuff with the software, infrastructure, and data developed, like activists and scientists, want to present their work and learn about the work of others. They want to inspire with their work. They want to discover new tools and methods.[1] => Geo-work needs global public exposure to inspire everyone Geo-community members are really geo-doers in a community. They also want to meet the members of their community face-to-face, make plans for the future and discuss or resolve issues. They probably want to welcome new participants. They probably also want to learn of other projects, related efforts, new tools. => Geo-communities need public exposure to inspire and recruit => community mingling is a top-level activity Geo-developers want to touch base with one another, talk within their projects about plans and issues, hack a little. Developers want to touch base with other projects, learn what is going on, find synergies. Developers want to get an overview of the state of the landscape, who is doing what, what cool new thing is going on. Developers also want to evangelize their projects; get good exposure to the general public. => Geo-projects need public exposure to inform and recruit => developer mingling is a top-level activity => coding workshops are one type of workshop Geo-learners come in many flavours There are the geo-neophytes who don't know what any of this is about and want some kind of overview. They probably need a talk on 'Spatial Data Infrastructures' which talks about all the pieces of the geo* puzzle: Desktop clients, Web Clients, Web Services, Databases but also Spatial Analysis, Spatial Infrastructure, Spatial Hardware, ... a global overview. => geo-neophytes need, at the very start, an introduction to 'what is geospatial' and 'what of geospatial is being presented at FOSS4G' There are the geo-newcommers who come with some vision of what they want to learn. They either start with an idea of something they want to *do* or of some tool they want to do their thing with. The former need to be pointed to the tools they can work with, then both need to get a chance to learn to use the tools. => one type of workshop targets these users, workshops that show how to get started and where to go learn more => these folk deserve an 'introduction to the Live-DVD' perhaps split by domain There are the core users who want
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The OSGeo response to the proposed "GeoServices REST API" document [was: Would you be concerned ...]
On 5/9/13 2:33 PM, Tim Bowden wrote: On Thu, 2013-05-09 at 13:20 -0300, Adrian Custer wrote: Hey Cameron, all, ... * The letter is only rejection of the proposal without offering an alternative way forwards. I strongly suspect the proposed standard would have received a much better reception from the broader OSGeo community (with the diverse viewpoints it typically has) if the proposal was more that a "take it or leave it" (partial?) description of what ESRI has done and is going to do anyway. Undoubtedly. This was as undiplomatic as they could have been. If there was at least some willingness to engage with the broader community on interoperability within the standard (and how do you have interoperability if you aren't willing to budge from a pre-defined position anyway?). And there would have been more participation at the OGC. Lots of folk were excited at the start but gave up when backwards compatibility was set in stone. Perhaps ESRI didn't realise their approach was going to come across with an "up you" attitude (or maybe they did)? The impression I've got it that many people feel ESRI is treating the OGC as a "rubber stamp" body (which very much implies arrogant contempt) regardless of the merits of the proposal. Much more likely, ESRI is trying to "push through" its standard, distinct from expecting the OGC to 'rubber stamp' it. They knew from the get go they were going to face this opposition. The only question is who is stronger. This is a good example of the limits of governance at the OGC. Really, a standard should not pass when there is concerted opposition to it. The process is designed to suspend when there is opposition (2 no votes), in an effort to build consensus. However, the ultimate decision is still a 50% + 1 vote; probably, it should be a super-majority of some kind. Hopefully I've got it wrong and ESRI really just botched their approach on this one (why do I feel this is naive wishful thinking?). FWIW, I don't believe having an alternate incompatible standard must of itself be a deal breaker, if the proposed standard genuinely represents a viable attempt at interoperability. After all, the wonderful thing about standards is there are so many to choose from. ;) Lets just not pretend it's about genuine interoperability unless that really is the case. I doubt anyone is that naive. Regards, Tim Bowden cheers, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] The OSGeo response to the proposed "GeoServices REST API" document [was: Would you be concerned ...]
Hey Cameron, all, Cameron, you recently asked me to join your letter from the OSGeo to the OGC Members regarding the adoption of the proposed "ESRI GeoServices REST API" as an OGC standard. http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoservices_REST_API#Open_Letter_to_OGC_and_voting_members Thanks. Your request has forced me to define my position, which has been a huge waste of my time, but was probably worth doing. My response has two sides, my position on the debate and my decision to participate in the letter. The first is my position on the actual proposed standard. The pros: * The OGC should be in the business of developing good standards, not of choosing which standards should be implemented. * The proposers of the document want to make a standard and have followed all the rules of the consortium. The work of any such group of members deserves serious, good faith consideration. * The need for an integrated suite of services using simple data, which is addressed (partially) by the document, is real. The proposed document is pushing the OGC on this issue. * The proposed document could be useful to a number of people. * The proposed document is not significantly more broken than the existing standards of the OGC. As an author of standards at the OGC, I know how totally impossible it is to write a good standard, so the weaknesses in the existing document seem more acceptable. The cons: - * The OGC is, de-facto, in the position of recommending the interoperable standards for geospatial services. The proposed document is not good enough, not widely enough implemented, and not publicly supported enough, to be considered at the same level as existing standards. * Adopting a standard implies a desire to maintain the standard but the desire to support this approach by the OGC membership is limited. The lack of collaboration on this version bodes ill for the future. * The overlap in functionality between the proposed services and the existing services, notably with the ongoing work to modularize the existing services, is almost 100 percent. However, compatibility is low. * There is already a published document: http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/geoservices-rest-spec.pdf so there is no need for the document to be adopted as an OGC Standard merely for interoperability with the ESRI implemetation. * The document, as a new, separate effort, repeats mistakes which were made and since solved by the other services. * The document focuses on the past (notably with backwards compatibility and use of only GET/POST) not on the future. * The document needs a comprehensive editorial rewrite. (see at end) The problem for me, is that both simple answers are bad. A simple acceptance of the standard would introduce a new set of 'OGC approved' open services. The OGC approval might enable governments to buy a -new-name-here- solution instead of a W*S or a S*S solution. (On that, I am inclined to let them make their own mistakes.) The path forwards towards harmonizing the services is unclear. There is little good will towards the standard on behalf of the membership. Fixing this document in addition to fixing the W*S services will be a pain. Simply rejecting the solution would be bad for the OGC. It would place the OGC in the position of picking winners and losers in the standards business. It would mean that the OGC is stuck on the project of fixing the W*S standards to meet some nebulous future functionality without having any path to get there. It would discourage innovation and progress. Is there a third way? Well, actually, there is. The natural consequence of either decision is a renewed commitment towards trying to build this thing that we want, an integrated suite of simple services built using simple, well defined resources, accessible and usable using the core HTTP verbs, and discoverable through link following. That's the way forwards and why I have wasted a chunk of my life on WMS-Next. My personal conclusion, then, is that the vote does not concern me. I suspect the vote is mostly of interest to the commercial entities, groups whose self-interest is so destructive everywhere because it does not place user freedom and action first and foremost. Acceptance will have several net negative impacts on me but that's life, eh? For me, the path forwards is clear: make WMS-Next kick ass. The vote is merely a waste of my time. The second side to my response regards the actual letter. The pros: * The letter comes from the Free Software community which I think could have a voice on the matter. * The letter was started by someone who has my respect. * The letter re-enforces the link between OSGeo and the OGC. * The letter expresses many concerns which I share. The cons: * The letter
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
Hey Ann, all, On 5/6/13 5:48 PM, Anne Ghisla wrote: Stephan, Adrian: is there an effective way for OSGeo to address a statement to OGC, beside the official requests for comments and our Discuss list? Thanks for your thoughts, Anne Any official statement issued by the OSGeo Board or community on this particular vote should probably be addressed to the 'Voting Members of the OGC Technical Committee' since they are the ones who are taking a position during this vote and deciding whether to accept it or not as an official OGC standard. The statement could be sent via Carl Reed, who is the head of the OGC Technical Committee. He lurks on this list as part of the collaboration agreement between the two communities and can be reached directly at: creed U+0040 opengeospatial.org ciao, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
On 5/4/13 6:21 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
Adrian,
Thankyou, I was hoping that someone such as your self with insights into
the standard would explain the details. You email has been a great help.
Cheers.
I'm also hoping that someone will provide a more detailed comparison of
the similarities / differences, to help the rest of the community
understand what is happening.
I have not taken much detailed interest in these services ever since it
became clear that they had no interest in working with the WMS folk and
that nothing could be changed to improve the standard. (They couldn't
even fix dates to be in the unambiguous ISO 8609 format -MM-DD since
that would break 'backwards compatibility'!)
My understanding is that these services are built on what I call the
"Flat Feature Model" which are Features with single geometries made up
of 2D, linear structures (points, lines, or polygons) and a list of
primitive value attributes (the shapefile data model).
("Simple Features", it turns out, are not so simple; they can only
have a single geometry but that geometry can be multidimensional
and complex while the attributes can be arbitrarily complex and
in various namespaces. So 'Flat Features' are what I used to think
'Simple Features' were.)
There is surely a need for very simple geospatial services which are
limited to the Flat Feature Model. That is why we have all been working
on rewriting the W*S standards in modular form to allow for very simple
implementations while also enabling more complex implementations,
experiments, and easier fixes. The ESRI effort, had it been designed to
help users, could easily have plugged into the efforts going on in the
various W*S groups. Instead, it has so far been a complete drain on my time.
~adrian
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
On 5/4/13 6:06 PM, Jody Garnett wrote: Thanks for the background Adrian, do we know of any other parties with implementation plans? -- Jody Garnett The known implementations are listed in the document responding to the 'no' vote. I won't list them here 'till I hear back on the status of these documents as public ( f*&^(ing Imaginary Property Rules that won't die). However, you'll be glad to know that GDAL is listed as an implementation in the "Processing GeoServices JSON" since it "can read" the JSON file returned from one of the services! ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
On 5/4/13 5:20 PM, Even Rouault wrote: Note that Cameron was either unclear or incorrect in his presentation of where the standard now stands. * The document was released for public comment. (see above) * A response to all the comments was issued. (however incomplete) Adrian, Do you have by chance a link to the response to comments ? I did write comments on the documents during the public comment period, but didn't remember seeing any response posted on the OGC list where I posted my comments... Best regards, Even Hey, Sent a request to the powers that be at the OGC for access to the documents. Certainly the response to the RFC should be public; the response to the 'no' votes probably should be but might be kept internal until the outcome of the vote is known. Will let you know when I get a response, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
Hey Barry, There is no useful concept of a 'reference implementation' at the OGC. The things the OGC calls 'reference implementation' are actually "example testing implementations." The word was incorrectly adopted by the testing group (pushed by those with commercial concerns). The testing group now wants to have multiple 'reference implementations' showing they are not really a 'reference' in the common understood meaning. I am trying to get the testers to change the terminology to avoid the semantic conflict with the general meaning of 'reference implementation.' Critically, none of the implementations were vetted by the groups defining the actual standards documents so there is little relation between the implementation and the standard. It therefore makes little sense to think of 'reference implementations' at the OGC. As far as "GeoServices REST", the default reference implementations are ESRI's since the document is merely defining how those implementations work. ~adrian On 5/4/13 1:27 PM, Barry Rowlingson wrote: On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote: I'm wanting to hear whether people in the OSGeo community have strong opinions regarding this proposed standard, and whether we as a collective OSGeo community should make statements to the OGC, and voting OGC members, stressing our thoughts. My current concern is that the standards documents are in a bunch of Microsoft Word files. And a bunch of Microsoft Word files that *crash* my current version of OpenOffice Oh the comedy of open standards being written using non-open file formats[1] The ironic comment of "standards are great - lets have more of them" possibly applies here. In terms of open source implementations, the google search "geoservices rest api github" doesn't find much, so I suspect the open source community is happy with its web APIs already. These guys: https://github.com/WSDOT-GIS/Traveler-Info-GeoServices-REST appear to be implementing a GeoServices REST endpoint for their system, maybe they'd be willing to refactor their code out and develop it as a reference server implementation? But oh dear it seems to be written in C#. I'm not sure what the term 'reference implementation' means here. Any difference in behaviour between an implementation and the spec is a bug with the implementation, yes? For that I don't think it matters if the "reference implementation" is open source or a black box - that's irrelevant to its compliance with the standard. However, a freely-available implementation does make it easier (and in some cases, possible) to write code that works practically. I wouldn't like to write a GeoServices client without a server to test it against. Without it my option is to check my client request is correct by comparing it with the standards document (in that unreadable Word document). Imagine if the authors of the first web browsers hadn't had http servers to actually test against? The advantages of an open source reference implementation are also the usual advantages of open source that we've been banging on about for years. Mismatches between open source implementations and standards docs can be fixed in minutes and released, and users don't have to wait six months for the next product update release, for example. Is there an open-source reference implementation of code to work with every aspect of the KML file standard? The situation seems analagous - a proprietary standard pushed to OGC and opened up. Barry [1] yeah this is probably wrong and MS got their file formats certified 'open' somehow... blah blah court case blah blah ISO voting blah blah ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the "GeoServices REST API" became an OGC standard?
Dear Cameron, all, There is indeed a massive conflict at the OGC related to this proposed standard and it may be useful to inform this list about that conflict and the process. However, I am unsure how expanding the *discussion* here helps. The proposed standard aims to document a series of web services and a JSON based data exchange format. The standard comes in eight parts 12-054r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 1: Core 12-055r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 2: Catalog 12-056r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 3: Map Service 12-057r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 4: Feature Service 12-058r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 5: Geometry Service 12-059r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 6: Image Service 12-060r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 7: Geoprocessing Service 12-061r2 GeoServices REST API - Part 8: Geocoding Service and there are also 12-068r2 GeoServices REST API - JSON Schemas and Examples The documents describe the functioning of a set of web services, developed originally by ESRI, and the JSON format for many objects, also defined by ESRI, and used by those services. The OGC request for comments (now closed) is here: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/89 with each of the documents. Note that Cameron was either unclear or incorrect in his presentation of where the standard now stands. * The document was released for public comment. (see above) * A response to all the comments was issued. (however incomplete) * The document was then released for a vote. * The vote was suspended because two 'no' votes were heard. * A response was issued to the 'no' votes. * The vote was resumed * The vote was (re) suspended because two additional 'no' votes were heard, with new arguments. => the vote is current suspended awaiting (1) a response to the new reasons, and (2) a decision of what to do next by the leadership of the OGC technical committee (where all this work happens), since we have not yet faced such lack of consensus. The proposed standard has been controversial from the start at the OGC. The controversy, as best as I can tell, centers on the following issues: * no backwards incompatible changes were allowed, * no work was done to integrate the proposed services with existing OGC services (W*S, ...), * the only implementations are by ESRI and its partners, * the name of the standard and services are not accurate or distinct. Banning backwards incompatible changes is controversial both because it blocked collaboration at the OGC (which essentially had to approve the ESRI implementation as is) and because it prevented things like using GeoJSON where appropriate. Also, going forwards, backwards compatibility will have to be maintained giving the existing implementations (i.e. ESRI's) a huge advantage in defining extensions (ESRI already has a number in the pipeline). The lack of integration with existing services is controversial both because they made no effort to work with the existing working groups and because it splits the work of the OGC into competing efforts. There is no clear path forwards towards harmonization despite the fact that most groups working on OGC Services are tackling issues in the same area (simple services, JSON exchange format, REST design). The dominance of ESRI is controversial both because the working mode lacked any collaborative spirit and, perhaps most critically, because this is seen as a way through which ESRI can bring its own service onto an equal footing with the current, public OGC standards in the government procurement game. Governments are shifting towards requiring that all spatial software conform with published, open standards; the proposed standard, if adopted, would allow ESRI to push its own software as also an "Open Standard" and compete on an unequal footing with implementations of the software being worked on by everyone else. The name of the standard 'GeoServices REST API' and the services are controversial for many reasons. The 'GeoServices' moniker is non-descript (many OGC standards are for geospatial services) and matches the current ESRI marketing terminology. 'REST' is a buzzword and implies a lot of design work which has not been done (and is happening elsewhere at the OGC); furthermore, if REST is about the design of a service's behaviour (that the service acts based on the transfer of representations of resources), then the word does not relate to an 'API'. Finally, the 'API' word does not really describe the standard which is describing a number of services and data exchange formats. The names of each service, e.g. either 'Map Service' or 'GeoServices Map Service' is problematic: how do we make sure that people know the difference between the 'OGC Web Map Service' and the 'OGC GeoService Map Service' ? However, despite these criticism
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G Buenos Aires 2013
Hey Jeff, Thanks for pointing out the mail. Glad though to see that Mauricio is proud, of himself, of the crew, of the meeting. Unfortunately, the automatic transation is more problematic...it gets the general sentiment but drops minor things like, erm, negations: > Acá ***no*** hay gente con > objetivos personales que estén por encima de los objetivos comunes. =/= Here there are people with personal goals that are above the common objectives. Too bad, too, since that was the sentence that best captured the feeling of the meeting: a space where everyone is thrilled to see the progress of all the others. ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G Buenos Aires 2013
Hey Cameron, all, FOSS4G BA 2013 rocked! So much, we are all, totally, beat. The organizers did an amazing job, pulling off the conference without any noticeable hitch. Their friendliness and passion permeated the whole event. It was a stellar performance from what appears to be a great group of friends. Attendees came from all over South America, with a few from Europe and North America. We were a great mix of technical developers and users, of folk working with government agencies, in universities, at companies and some simply interested folk. (There was even at least one spy, a developer who had never thought about geospatial before but who had been sent by a friend to check things out.) We discovered the amazing overlap of issues and solutions being developed across the continent. The workshop rooms were totally full, standing room only! Some of the great talks (for me) were: * a talk on a social mapping project helping non-technical communities map their land use in order to pressure recognition from local and national governments, * the presentation of GvSig 2.0, a release which apparently has cost a lot of work but is a real new beginning for that project, * a talk on HOT (the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team)---the best of our crowd-sourced activism, * a 30 minute, stopwatch in hand, walk through of building a spatial analysis application with processing.js and any WMS, * presentations on the amazing work going on in Italy at a University in Milan and at the World Food Organization. Best of all, it was fantastic to hear geospatial discussed in all sorts of different flavours of Spanish! IGN, the argentine national mapping agency, was a great venue. Access was really easy, right on a main avenue, next to the subway with tons of buses in front. The agency opened up their amphitheater and meeting rooms to us, gave us a decent amount of bandwidth (which we proceeded to squash, of course), and seemed thrilled to see a new kind of geospatial, youthful and full of energy. They also have this great little museum at the entrance with the entire history of the instruments they have used over the years mapping the country. And Buenos Aires ... well, the city never stops so when you find yourself walking home, yet again, at four in the morning, there are all sorts of people around, waiting for the bus, grabbing a bite to eat, wandering into and out of clubs, and walking along the side walks. The only real question of FOSS4G BA is when the next one comes. However, the conference has only just ended today, really, so don't expect updates right away. Officially, FOSS4G BA was Wed (workshops), Thur, Friday (talks) but today (Sat) they continued with a State of the Map, Ar. That ended up being a fun workshop with Maté (a local tea) being passed around and everyone having such a good time we kind of had to force ourselves to go to lunch. Eventually, the organizers plan to upload talks and videos and pictures and all sorts of goodies but we need to give them a little while yet---as far as I can tell they have not had a decent night sleep or regular meals in quite a while. cheers, ~adrian On 4/27/13 6:07 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote: I understand that FOSS4G Buenos Aires completed last week? I'd encourage organisors, presenters and attendees to share their thoughts on how this (first?) South American FOSS4G event went. I'd also be interested to see metrics on where people travelled from in order to attend, and compare to prior foss4g events. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al9zh8DjmU_RdEZoOUtSeVZRVWtKQzV6R2N5ekdSdlE#gid=57 On 15/11/12 03:48, Mauricio Miranda wrote: Hello everybody, I'm writing on behalf of the FOSS4G conference committee to be held in Buenos Aires next year. The event is being organized by the group "Geoinquietos Buenos Aires" which is a kind of argentinian OSGeo microchapter. Even though this conference is focused on the Spanish-speaking community in Latin America, we would like to invite you all to join us. This will be a great opportunity to share experience, projects and ideas, and of course, it will also help to consolidate the FOSS4G community on these ends. You can get more info about the event at: http://foss4g-ba.org Please, help us to promote the conference between your folks. We look forward to seeing you here! Thanks, Mauri ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Journal Volume 11 (2011 Annual Report) Published
Hello, Unfortunately the piece in the OSGeo Journal, vol 11, on 'Simple Features' is promulgating a common misconception. It turns out that 'Simple Features' are *not* constrained to have a flat table of attributes. 'Simple Features' are only restricted to have a single geometry which must be 'simple.' The attributes may be arbitrarily nested and may be in different namespaces. Also the 'simple' geometry, which traditionally included only elements in 2D with linearly interpolated arcs (points, lines, polygons) are now being expanded to more forms and possibly more dimensions. So it turns out that 'Simple Features,' as discussed in the standards group, are not so simple. We do need a term to talk about the kinds of features discussed in the article. The best I have discovered is 'Flat Feature' which implies: 1) no explicit discussion of temporality 2) a single spatial definition, which must be 2D and only use linear interpolation 3) have a 'flat' table of other attributes, that is that attributes are not nested in each other. The 'flat' in the name refers both to the geometry and to the form of the attributes, which could form a single row in a table. cheers, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G presentation review process
On 10/2/12 3:05 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote: On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:01 AM, Bruce Bannerman wrote: (snip) > it seems that we have two processes going on - what sounds like a good talk, and who sounds like a good speaker. (snip) Beyond that, there is the question of selecting between talks to establish the balance you intend. Does the conference want to promote new, quirky, innovative, free software projects or to market the large, established, already successful projects? To promote the former, you might have to accept talks by folk you do not know, by folk who have a hard time speaking English, by folk who do not yet have the polish of the dominant players, by folk who are younger or less in the know. Also, you might have to limit the number of talks on dominant projects or by dominant groups. Just picking the 'good' talks may lead the conference to once again have many talks about the same projects that have come to dominate and fewer talks from new talent. Therefore picking talks only on the individual merits, whether of the abstract, topic, or speaker, leads to a particular kind of gathering, geared towards past success rather than towards fostering future diversity. ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] The Geotools fork and current relicensing discussion [was Re: The importance of a project's license]
ore code base of the two projects was overwhelmingly Martin's work, and that the new code base has diverged enormously from the time of the fork. Given these two 'wrong feelings' how do we find the best resolution? I am surprising myself in deciding that my strong inclination towards considering as inviolate the terms of a license are trumped by circumstance. Given the exclusion of Geotoolkit from OSGeo, the importance of the Apache foundation to free software in general, the overwhelming contribution of Martin to the original Geotools code base, the extent to which the geotoolkit code has been refactored since them, it would strike me as most judicious for OSGeo to figure out a way for Geotoolkit to be able to join the Apache project. ~adrian custer P.S. Like others, I find license discussions exceedingly burdensome, a necessary evil. Today, I have lost a few hours on this email. Therefore, I might simply ignore subsequent discussion, even if messages contain direct questions made to me. It is not that interesting. [1] I was a minor contributor to Geotools, mostly on the analysis and documentation side and was then part of the Geotoolkit fork. Please do note however, that I have since moved on and am not working with any of those projects or talking to any of those folk these days, so this analysis, critique, and comments are my own only. [2] I personally find the failure to make Martin a charter member as one glaring indictment of OSGeo and its community, revealing the inwards looking favoritism and lack of exploration beyond. There are few people as passionate, knowledgeable, or productive as Martin about free geospatial software so the fact that OSGeo has not managed to pull in his energy reveals both that the community fails to include some great folk and that OSGeo does not actually manage to represent the interests of 'free geospatial software' in general. [3] For the pedantic, yes, the OSGeo incubating committee did not actually *deny* geotoolkit. Indeed trac ticket 362 (http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/362) is still open. However, the incubating committee slowly stopped communicating with the project resulting in a de facto rejection. Taking a formal decision might have required some fortitude but would have been more elegant. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] The OGC schema changes related to XLink
Hey all, As some of you are aware the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has adopted a policy to alter the XLink dependency in many of the XML schemas maintained by the OGC and used for several Web Services and for some GML. This situation arises because the OGC adopted their own 'stub' XLink schema back before the W3C had published any official schema for XLink. Now that there is an offical W3C schema, the OGC is attempting to re-align all existing OGC schemas on those new XLink schemas. The FAQ (see below), explains that they chose to consider these backwards incompatible changes to be 'fixes' allowing for this approach retroactively 'fixing' all the schemas to reference the official W3C XML Schema. Since the 'fix' is backwards incompatible, that approach surprised many of us. When the issue last came up, I took action to press for more explanation from the OGC folk, since I am involved over there. Carl Reed, the Chair of the Technical Committee at the OGC (where all the standards work happens), has just released several documents related to the transition. Back in April, Carl published a blog entry discussing the process: http://www.opengeospatial.org/blog/1597 He has now published two documents, a letter and a FAQ: On Thu, 2012-06-28 at 16:33 -0400, cr...@opengeospatial.org wrote: > Dear OGC Members > > Based on final input from the TC and the PC concerning the transition > of the OGC XLink schema to the W3C XLink 1.1 schema, I developed an > overview letter with updated information. Based on Member feedback, I > also wrote an XLink transition FAQ. The FAQ is a living document that > I can updated based on feedback and additional information. > > The letter is here: > > https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=49562 > > and the FAQ is here: > > https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=49563 > > We will stand up a twiki for community collaboration during the > transition period. > > Thanks and regards > > Carl Reed > Technical Committee Chair (Unfortunately these are both in the MS Office format .docx). Finally, the OGC has set up an email list for discussions related to the transition. https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/beta-schemas Carl has assured me they will open the archives for public viewing so we don't all have to sign up to see the tone and content of the discussion. These documents are not totally satisfactory but are probably all we are going to get on the subject. For instance, I do not understand the impact on their certification process: all their certified services will stop being compatible after the transition. So for those who are interested, there is ow a little more information and a mailing list for contact and discussion. cheers, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] Distracting discussions of discussing [was:] What is North America?
On Sat, 2011-11-12 at 10:07 +0100, Jean-Philippe Lagrange wrote: > Hi Adrian, > > Should now French people feel some prejudice because of your disparaging > words? Jean-Phillipe Lagrange, There were no "disparaging words" in my email. I am a native speaker of English so I know how to use the language pretty well to have it say what I mean to say rather than something else. Also, I had no intent to disparage the people of the country where I was born, where I have spent the past few years, and where part of my family lives. So if you have read something you find disparaging of yourself or others in my email, please know that you have invented it. Also, since these emails are (1) lighthearted (2) ironic and (3) joking, it would be best if everyone made the effort to read them looking for irony and happiness rather than looking for insults. Arnulf is playing on the tensions between 'north americans' and others in the americas, playing on the history of violent confrontation between those groups. He is playing in order to, light heartedly, call into question what 'North american' might mean for a regional chapter of OSGeo. That is the interesting question. The rest of this bantering is merely irrelevant irreverent political banter. Even 'gringo' that started this all, is, in my experience, used much more frequently as a statement of fact, or as a lighthearted comment, than as a direct insult. I personally found it much quicker to call myself a 'gringo' than the mouthful 'estado unidense' or 'norte americano'. Daniel, to my surprise, finds the term obviously and clearly insulting. Such is the spectrum of human experience. Nonetheless, I suspect we all can recognize that Arnulf did not start his email trying to insult people but rather, in a fit of his boundless energy, to spark a discussion about the OSGeo chapter. ~adrian PS If you still consider my mail insulting, I would be glad to reassure you that it was not written that way. Contact me directly, in french if you like, and we can resolve this offline. > Should we follow up by wondering what natives of Northern America > think of 'occupation which sucks'? By all means. Although, if you look at my last name, you will perhaps understand that I usually start with the genocidal conquest of these united states rather than end up considering it. > > Such consideration do not lead anybody anywhere. Nowadays borders are > a result of history, including past wars, and nobody should argue too > much against the formers, for we do not want the latters to develop > again among nations. Actually, many people do argue against and question borders; others try to undermine the nation states and focus on human well being instead. > By the way, French Islands in your area do not stop at two bitty islands > off the Eastern coast, you may also include French Antillas, Except that this was the whole point of Arnulf's email; the carribean is almost never considered part of 'north america' despite being (1) in the americas and (2) north of the equator. Nor is the much more sizeable Mexico. > not so far > from Puerto Rico, recently added to the USA. > > Best, > JP > > De : discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] de la > part de Adrian Custer [acus...@gmail.com] > Date d'envoi : vendredi 11 novembre 2011 20:25 > À : OSGeo Discussions > Objet : Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] What is North America? > > On Fri, 2011-11-11 at 11:29 +0100, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote: > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Now that a North American Regional Chapter is emerging I wanted to > > understand what the term "North America" actually means. Just a few > > example: > > > > In my cultural context (Germany) the Unites States on their own are > > typically called "Amerika" which in reality is a whole continent. To > > many Germans Kanada (yes, with a "K") is just a US wilderness adventure > > park (Canadians: no offence meant). In many South American countries US > > citizens are nowadays called "Gringo" which originally meant "Green Go" > > and relates to US "interventions" in Middle and Southern America. > > > > So for many non-North-Americans the term might be really, really fuzzy > > which is why I thought it would be a good idea to define it more > > closely, started here: > > http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:North_America_Regional > > > > Looking at the typical roles of a local chapter (or in this case a "meta > > local chapter" or "regional chapter") I would suggest that this chapter > > would be the pri
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] What is North America?
On Fri, 2011-11-11 at 11:29 +0100, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > Now that a North American Regional Chapter is emerging I wanted to > understand what the term "North America" actually means. Just a few > example: > > In my cultural context (Germany) the Unites States on their own are > typically called "Amerika" which in reality is a whole continent. To > many Germans Kanada (yes, with a "K") is just a US wilderness adventure > park (Canadians: no offence meant). In many South American countries US > citizens are nowadays called "Gringo" which originally meant "Green Go" > and relates to US "interventions" in Middle and Southern America. > > So for many non-North-Americans the term might be really, really fuzzy > which is why I thought it would be a good idea to define it more > closely, started here: > http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:North_America_Regional > > Looking at the typical roles of a local chapter (or in this case a "meta > local chapter" or "regional chapter") I would suggest that this chapter > would be the primary point of contact for the organization of a FOSS4G > event in English language in either the US or Canada. Extending it > beyond these two countries would probably raise a whole lot of > additional issues starting with language (Spanish) and ending with > politics (Cuba) - which will probably complicate things beyond > recognition. I can also see other meta chapters forming with a more > Spanish speaking background in the Middle Americas, so there is no > exclusivity here at all. The Spanish speaking Local Chapter might also > be a good template to see how this could look. > > But anything I say here is absolutely not fundamental at all, just 2ct > from an outsider (sent in the hope that this list will see a broadly > inclusive dialog about how this group will evolve). > > Have fun, > Arnulf What a strange mail. If you are playing with a definition based on geography and nation states, then you have to include France as well in North America for the two itty, bitty islands it claims of the eastern coast---doesn't territorial occupation suck? Your language argument, however, seems to abandon any geographic basis and focus on English based on some definition by cultural domination. For a geographic definition, you would have to include French both for Québec and for the French territories in the Atlantic(vis above). To be realistic, you should probably include Spanish a well since that is an officially supported language in many regions of America, north of the Rio Grande. Finally, if you wanted to be correct, then there are many, many other languages spoken here, many of which are native to the geographic region. Then again, if you leave things vague, then people who want to do 'free software' in 'the general area around the great lakes' might all want to play. Oh sorry, not the people focused on freedom, the people focused on 'openness' of source 'code' for whatever benefit that might bring. But anything I say here is absolutely a waste of time. ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] multi-lingual WMS-legends
Hey Cameron, all, On 05/25/2011 12:12 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote: OGC standards people, Have there been any discussions at the OGC level about specifying language support within OGC standards? Yes, we have had discussions; no we have not yet found solutions. As part of our work cleaning up the "WMS mess" for 2.0, I have looked at the language rules given by 'OWS Common' (the proposed base layer for all OGC Web Services). Those rules seem both restrictive and broken (due to mutually incompatible requirements). The broken can be fixed, however the fundamental approach itself is problematic for WMS. The approach of OWS Common forces any OGC web service that wishes to advertise that it supports a particular language to offer *all* its text strings in all of its resources in that language. The bar is therefore exceedingly high---it seems to argue that if any layer of labels on the service cannot be obtained with all its labels in a particular language, that language cannot be said to be supported by the service. For WMS labels of, say, place names, this all or nothing approach seems needlessly restrictive; it is hard enough to get labels of any kind for a country or continent without trying to get them all in a single language (let alone several). I suspect the current approach sets an impossibly high requirement. Regardless, it seems like it would be useful to have some language mechanism, presumably using an additional but complimentary approach, based on a best effort contract. (Note that INSPIRE too seems to use the 'everything must be fully translated' approach, if I remember correctly.) Then there are a few technical difficulties that will need to be resolved---e.g. OWS Common requires that each and every string which is localized to have its localization labelled directly on the XML element without explaining if/how this labelling should work on non XML elements. Also, there are many strings which should *not* be localized so it would be better if the various OWS services identified which fields were expected to contain human readable, textual content. There is also the problem that INSPIRE seems to be using its own particular language identifiers different from those commonly found in the world of the Web. There are other issues as well that are not coming to mind right now but will need to be addressed. So it seems there are two needs for language support: one in which Servers indicate they have full and complete support for a particular language, another through which they may indicate a best effort support for a given language. As to the details of the mechanisms of how a client indicates its particular language preference and how a server indicates the particular languages in which it has offerings, they are part of our ongoing work cleaning up the 'what a mess' of WMS. Easy, pragmatic solutions which solve anyone's particular needs can readily be found (and the '&lang=' parameter seems to be one such solution); solving the general need for all OGC Services needs someone to wade through the problem space, discover alternative solutions, evaluate those alternative solutions, develop a mechanism to enable the best of these solutions, and finally develop the injunctions which will make it work. For our work on WMS 2.0, we have accumulated notes on the language issues but not yet progressed to develop alternative possible solutions nor decided on how to implement the best of those solutions. We did decide that our contribution to fixing OWS Common would come after we had done the bulk of the work on WMS 2.0. ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Using an OSGeo membership to work at the OGC
e descended upon us these past few years and pushed hard and well to have their needs addressed which I expect to really start happening next year. Internally, we have many currents as well. The requirement to build specs as assemblages of modules has been hard for everyone and yet very useful, making for better standards. There is a real, historical split between the Sensor/Observation work and the WCS, WFS, WMS, WPS services but we are starting to find common ground and may grow closer over time. The REST debate rages, flaring up every other month---it is pushing us all to think better about how these services could work. (Hmm, well even this 'off the top of my head' example was not quick.) ~adrian On Friday, 15 April 2011 at 10:34 PM, Adrian Custer wrote: Hey all, In reviewing Arnulf's recent white paper, I was reminded that OSGeo has various memberships to the OGC. Since I am in need of re-joining the OGC as an individual member, I might be in a position to use such a membership. Do we have any guidelines on how these memberships are to be used? Specifically, if I were to use one of them would I need to 'represent' the OSGeo membership in some way (which I would find hard since I have always been on the margins of OSGeo) or could I continue to represent the 'free software community' as I feel I already do quite a bit at the OGC? Are there any other responsiblities that using one of those memberships would bring, such as reporting back to OSGeo in some way? More practically, how would one go about requesting such a membership? And finally, is anyone actually invested in any of these memberships yet? Thanks for any information or pointers, ~~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org <mailto:Discuss@lists.osgeo.org> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] Using an OSGeo membership to work at the OGC
Hey all, In reviewing Arnulf's recent white paper, I was reminded that OSGeo has various memberships to the OGC. Since I am in need of re-joining the OGC as an individual member, I might be in a position to use such a membership. Do we have any guidelines on how these memberships are to be used? Specifically, if I were to use one of them would I need to 'represent' the OSGeo membership in some way (which I would find hard since I have always been on the margins of OSGeo) or could I continue to represent the 'free software community' as I feel I already do quite a bit at the OGC? Are there any other responsiblities that using one of those memberships would bring, such as reporting back to OSGeo in some way? More practically, how would one go about requesting such a membership? And finally, is anyone actually invested in any of these memberships yet? Thanks for any information or pointers, ~adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [Board] Open Source and Open Standards White Paper
Hey Seven,
you two are working on a position paper which is hard to write well! So
please take the critique below as encouragement and ideas, if you have
time, to perhaps help you improve the structure of what you are trying
to write.
On 04/14/2011 08:55 PM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
Folks,
please be so kind and give this paper a moment of your attention:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:Open_Source_and_Open_Standards
In discussing the 'open standards', your point 3 related to OGC
standards is actually *not* a policy of the OGC. OGC policies would
allow patent encumbered standards requiring license fees; it is only by
luck(?) that no OGC standard has yet been that way. Similarly, point 5
is not true. WMS requires a document returned in XML which follows a
particular schema. We currently are working on a new approach which
would allow flexibility in 'data storage model{s} or format{s}' but we
are not there yet and regardless we will probably always require a
finite number of such formats---their standardization is part of our
mandate. Point 6 is something I am not yet convinced of: recently a
standard has been approved which is wholly controlled by a single
organization (a single person really); it is not clear yet how this
process will evolve and if control will be distributed from that person
to a community of some kind. So perhaps you can change the lead it from
'standards which are' to 'standards which aim to be' or you might revise
the list of points.
In introducing 'Open Source' you discuss, appropriately, the aspects of
freedom important to some software that labels itself with that moniker.
However, you never relate that back to the openness of the source---it
might be worth mentioning that freedom implies access to the source (to
read, to rebuild, to modify), thereby explaining the label 'open
source'. The second paragraph, the typical clarification of 'free' in
'free software', does not make so much sense here since you have adopted
the label 'Open Source' rather than 'Free software.' The list of
freedoms is also problematic since they are germaine to 'free software'
but not necessaryly to 'open source' software. Probably, it would be
better to list the 10 requirements of 'open source' software you mention
in the third paragraph, rather than the four requirements of 'free
software'. As Cameron mentioned, you then launch into the variety of
production styles in 'Open source' projects but really you probably want
to go from the list of requirements to a list of advantages: both of the
artifacts (can audit the source) and of the projects which produce them.
'release early/often' is not a good in itself, indeed it forces users to
vet the software they acquire---you have to talk about the benefits that
such an approach can bring. Finally you end the section with 'real Open
Source software' which is starting to be a mess; if there is 'real' and
'fake' then that will need to be front and center not a passing
reference at the end of the section.
In discussing 'open data' I disagree with your 'The most prominent open
geospatial data project is OpenStreeMap.' By far the open data which has
had the biggest impact on GIS these past four decades in my opinion has
been the longstanding tradition of the US government that its data,
funded by the people taxed by the US government, has already been paid
for and therefore is part of the public domain. Colaborative data
acquisitions efforts are fascinating and full of potential but are not
necessarily 'most prominent' outside of our circle and build on existing
traditions which have been going on for a while (e.g. the national bird
survey in the UK) which have massive communities (never underestimate
the birders). So perhaps you could talk about the real holdings of 'open
data' to which we have access today: the various geoids, the STRM and
global bathymetry hodlings, the MODIS archives, the global
self-consistent hierarchial shoreline database, and others. That can be
contrasted with the massive holdings which exist but are limited in use
in one way or another, i.e. 'dark data' or 'closed data'. Finally, you
can certainly talk about the more recent, community driven efforts to
accumulate 'mass market' data like the road networks but note that those
collection efforts are focused on particular kinds of data. In other
words, this section, if you are going to include it, needs love.
On the OGC position towards open source software, you probably have to
distinguish between the official position (agnostic), the position of
the members of the consortium (globally for the existance of such
implementations) and the de facto position (the OGC could but does not
allow free certification of open source implementations). The change of
person in the sentence starting 'Our goal ...', paragraph 2, is out of
place with the rest of the document (we don't know without work that
'our' is 'the OGC').
"OSGeo
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] GeoTools 8
Hey Jody, all,
congratulations to all of you on the ongoing work on geotools, glad to
see the project chugging along with all your laughter, sweat, and tears.
GeoTools 8, hein? Well the '2' was always a pain so it sounds wonderful
to get rid of it...
ciao,
~adrian
On 04/11/2011 02:17 AM, Jody Garnett wrote:
New blog post up with the details:
http://geotoolsnews.blogspot.com/2011/04/geotools-8.html
A couple supporting links:
- http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Skip+GeoTools+3
- http://docs.geotools.org/latest/developer/guide/conventions/version.html
- http://docs.geotools.org/latest/developer/guide/procedures/release.html
With this in place the project will follow a traditional
.. release number; essentially dropping the "2"
from "GeoTools 2".
Thanks to Joachim Van der Auwera from the Geomajas project who's
questions on the user list lead to this change in policy. A reminder
that the GeoTools proposal process is open to all, often proposals need
to be back up by effort; but we do run an open project :-)
If you are using 2.8-SNAPSHOT (and why wouldn't you it helps us get
early feedback :-) ) please update by changing over to 8-SNAPSHOT:
|
8-SNAPSHOT
org.geotools
gt-main
${geotools.version}
org.geotools
gt-epsg-hsql
${geotools.version}
|
--
Jody Garnett
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G Denver update: sponsorship, logo, web site
On Tue, 2010-12-21 at 09:31 -0700, Peter Batty wrote: > The organizing committee has been working away on various tasks for > next September’s FOSS4G conference in Denver. We now have sponsorship > details sorted out – you can download the brochure at > http://bit.ly/gbWbey (PDF). We are offering a 10% discount for any > sponsors who commit by the end of January. Hello Peter, Thanks to all of you for your work on FOSS4g2011! Some questions below about whether you have settled on an explicit focus for your conference. It seems your choices during your organization work will invariably influence the nature of this conference as mainly either a gathering of free software hackers for fun and cooperation or as a platform for those of us vending our software projects. I wonder how much thinking and conscious decision making you have made on this issue. Will there be any limits on talks from the same organization, from the same vendor, or from members of the organizing and selection committees? In particular, how does this work in that sponsors at the $most_precious_metal sponsorship level are already guaranteed one slot? Also, are talk proposals once again going to be submitted to a popularity vote? In my analysis, that resulted in getting many talks from the well known projects and well known personalities rather than getting a wide distribution of talks favouring the, possibly whacky, smaller projects. All are interesting, of course, but lead to a different flavour for the gathering so I am wondering what you are hoping to produce. Thanks for the clarification, ~adrian > > > > We also have a winner in our logo contest, which you can see at our > web site which is now up at http://2011.foss4g.org/. We had over 800 > votes in total, thanks to everyone who voted! The logo design was an > interesting process. Creating a logo is always tricky because you have > as many different opinions as people involved in the process! We used > a site called crowdspring, as you will know if you voted – multiple > people compete to create your logo, which we found worked very well. > And then they also have a voting process you can use if you like, > which I found very helpful to choose a winner from the multiple good > entries. > > > > And as mentioned above, our web site is now up and running - it will > have a lot more content added to it over the coming weeks. But check > out the timetable leading up to the conference – some significant > items coming up are the call for workshops which will be out in mid > January, and the call for papers which will be out at the beginning of > February. > > > Cheers, > > Peter. > > > ___ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board Elections 2010
On Sun, 2010-08-01 at 11:18 -0400, Frank Warmerdam wrote: > ...snip...The board > has, by motion, chosen to interpret "fail to participate ...in three > consecutive meetings" as failure to participate in the charter/board > election process for three years running. Hopefully you distinguish participation from voting since some choose not to vote out of principle (although perhaps this is not an issue for the charter members who might all have bought in to the vote based approach of decision making used by OSGeo). > The Secretary (Tyler) is responsible for keeping track of participation in > cooperation with the election CRO. Great. So has Tyler done so? Where do things stand? Does Paul's list need revision as the list of potential candidates? If you don't have attendance or minutes, how can anyone possibly know? --adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board Elections 2010
On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote: > Adrian Custer wrote: >> >> Hello, >> >> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote: >>> >>> The complete list of charter members >>> is available by from >>> >>> * http://www.osgeo.org/charter_members >> >> Where can one find the official attendance records and proxy >> assignments of these members for the last three official "meetings of >> the members" ? Were minutes kept for those meetings? > > Adrian, > > The "meeting of members" is the AGM and we do not keep track of who > attends, nor are they in any way limited to charter members. We do > keep track of who actually votes in board and charter member elections > and we are supposed to deactivate members who haven't voted in either for > something like three years. > > I'm not clear why you are asking though as the call was for board elections. The call was for nominations for board elections, nominations which must come from the list of charter members. Since the list given by Paul contained the name of one person I know to have moved on to other activities, I wondered what provisions existed to ease inactive members out of the charter member inner circle. As you state, I discovered a clear provision to that effect: Section 7.7 Automatic Termination. Members shall have their membership status automatically terminated and their names removed by the Secretary of the corporation from all membership records of the corporation if they fail to participate, either in person or by proxy, in three (3) consecutive meetings of the members of the corporation, held electronically or otherwise. which says nothing about voting but only about participation --- "fail to participate". So it seems that (1) participation of charter members in membership meetings should be recorded and (2) the secretary might consider a purge of the list of charter members. That is unless these by-laws are merely considered pro-forma and the organization really run as it seems best to the board. --adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board Elections 2010
Hello, On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote: > The complete list of charter members > is available by from > >* http://www.osgeo.org/charter_members Where can one find the official attendance records and proxy assignments of these members for the last three official "meetings of the members" ? Were minutes kept for those meetings? thank you, adrian custer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Fwd: is wms-dev list still active?
On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 11:43 -0400, Yewondwossen Assefa wrote: > Hi, > > I was trying to send a question to the wms-dev list > (http://lists.eogeo.org/pipermail/wms-dev/ ), but It seems to be > inactive. I am wondering if someone knows where would it be > appropriate to send questions regarding WMS specification. > > Thanks > Hello, I can not say for that mailing list, it is the first I hear of it. If you have basic "how does this work?" kind of questions there are probably lots of people on this list who know the standard well and who could help. If you have highly technical questions, like "what is the presumed duration of validity of the ServiceMetadata document?", then you could send them to the WMS 2.0 Standard Working Group at the Open Geospatial Consortium. We have a moderated mailing list wms-1.4@lists.opengeospatial.org to which only Consortium members can subscribe. (Opening up the OGC is a long slow struggle.) If we have an answer Joan, Satish, or I are liable to answer; if we don't, you might launch us into a lively debate. cheers, --adrian PS Ignore the 1.4: after the standards group formed it became clear the next version of the standard had to be 2.0 and we've been too lazy/busy to dissolve and re-form under the new version number. > > > Original Message > Subject: > is wms-dev list still active? > Date: > Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:19:53 -0400 > > From: > Yewondwossen Assefa > >To: > wms-dev-ow...@lists.eogeo.org > > > Hi There, > > Is the wms-dev list still active and is the one to be used for wms > discussions? > > Looking at http://lists.eogeo.org/pipermail/wms-dev/ , I do not see any > posting since Feb 2010. > I also sent a posting to the list this morning but I believe it did > not make it to the list. > > Thanks, > > -- > > Assefa Yewondwossen > Software Analyst > > Email: yass...@dmsolutions.ca > http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ > > Phone: (613) 565-5056 (ext 14) > Fax: (613) 565-0925 > > > > > ___ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] StackOverflow like GIS website
Hey all, On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 10:39 -0300, George Silva wrote: > On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 4:23 AM, Alexis Guéganno > wrote: > > On 2 June 2010 20:17, miblon wrote: > > I would strongly opt to put effort in gettting GIS related > topics "on the > > map" on SO instead of copying SO for a limited audience. It > would surely > > show our presence to the people out there. > > > Hi everybody ! > > First I have a question > By the way, it will be really interesting, in my opinion, to > keep an > eye on what happens on SO (or on server fault, because I think > GIS > related questions can be found there too ;-) ). What i hope, > though, > with the start of a GIS dedicated site, is to gain in > audience, and to > gain a new place where people involved in GIS will be able to > share > their experiences. As I understand it, the folk behind Stack Overflow have already started on plans to expand the design to many other topics---you might want to follow the evolution over there and propose a "GIS" forum on the new site when it goes live. --adrian ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
