Re: GeoTIFF and the OGC
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Carl Reed
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Dear GeoTIFF list -
At the recent OGC meetings in Darmstadt, several OGC Members (large user
organizations) asked whether there is any interest on the part of the OGC to
move GeoTIFF into the OGC standards process and eventually make GeoTIFF an
international standard. As we have done with other de-facto standards submitted
into the OGC standards process, I would see very few (if any) normative changes
to the document as it moves to a version 1.0 OGC standard. I know that the
implementation community would not appreciate any "normative changes"! Further,
as with KML, CF-NetCDF and other documents, we believe that maintaining a strong
collaborative relationship with the existing GeoTIFF community is
critical.
As part of this process, the OGC and OGC Members would be responsible for
reformatting the document into the proper template, marshalling volunteer
resources to move the document through the OGC process, and to insure proper
communication and engagement with the current GeoTIFF community.
Your thoughts regarding this proposal are appreciated!
Thanks and regards
Carl Reed, PhD
CTO and Executive Director Specification Program OGC The OGC: Helping the World to Communicate Geographically
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Howard Butler
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On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Carl Reed wrote: > Dear GeoTIFF list - > > At the recent OGC meetings in Darmstadt, several OGC Members (large > user organizations) asked whether there is any interest on the part > of the OGC to move GeoTIFF into the OGC standards process and > eventually make GeoTIFF an international standard. As we have done > with other de-facto standards submitted into the OGC standards > process, I would see very few (if any) normative changes to the > document as it moves to a version 1.0 OGC standard. I know that the > implementation community would not appreciate any "normative > changes"! Further, as with KML, CF-NetCDF and other documents, we > believe that maintaining a strong collaborative relationship with > the existing GeoTIFF community is critical. > > As part of this process, the OGC and OGC Members would be > responsible for reformatting the document into the proper template, > marshalling volunteer resources to move the document through the OGC > process, and to insure proper communication and engagement with the > current GeoTIFF community. > > Your thoughts regarding this proposal are appreciated! > My concerns with the approach the following: - OGC subsuming the current GeoTIFF specification and becoming its ongoing authority effectively destroys any grass roots community that has sprung up around geotiff because of OGC's membership requirements. Casual or short-term-to-complete-this-job interest in geotiff is effectively shut out from participating, though you could argue there isn't much of this anyway. - OGC hasn't demonstrated that it can pull community-developed specifications into its world and have the community that birthed them survive the process. Does OGC's sausage taste that much better than sausage made outside the OGC? - GeoTIFF already has a widely used and effective reference implementation -- libgeotiff. That's more authority than a document stamped with an organization's letterhead can ever hope to be. What benefits would this development be to the GeoTIFF community other than forced acceptance of OGC-style axis order discipline? ;) Is the main benefit is to be the ability to make changes to the specification that implementers will have to implement to be compliant? Why try to evolve a specification that has been widely used and unchanged for nearly 10 years? _______________________________________________ Geotiff mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/geotiff |
Siri Jodha Khalsa
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NASA's Standards Process Group seeks to recognize community-developed
standards and has a review process that relies on community experience
with such standards. A NASA-endorsed standard can be recommended for
usage in future missions, such as the Decadal Survey missions currently
formulating their science data processing systems (DESDynI, ICESat-II,
SMAP, CLARREO, etc.)The review process is started with submission of an RFC to the SPG. Such a move was initiated by the GeoTIFF community some years back, but ran out of steam before the document was prepared. Perhaps someone is willing to renew this effort? SiriJodha S. Khalsa Howard Butler wrote: On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Carl Reed wrote: -- Siri-Jodha Singh KHALSA, Ph.D., SMIEEE National Snow and Ice Data Center University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0449 Phone: 1-303-492-1445 http://cires.colorado.edu/~khalsa _______________________________________________ Geotiff mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/geotiff |
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Carl Reed
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In reply to this post
by Howard Butler
Well, Howard, there is a GeoTIFF user community out there that 1.) does not
want to see the GeoTIFF grassroots community "destroyed" but 2.) does want GeoTIFF to be an international standard that can be referenced as such in policy and procurement. What would you suggest we do?? That said, I am sorry you have issues with the OGC process. But based on what you have written, I believe you may have some misconceptions about the OGC and OGC processes. The OGC process is much more open to non-Member participation than you believe. 1. OGC Working Groups can be made open to participation by OGC Members and non-Members. For example, the OGC Mass Market, Hydrology, and Meteorology/Oceans Domain Working Groups are open to anyone who wishes to participate. 2. The entire change request process is publicly accessible. Anyone at any time can submit a change request using the public change request proposal web application. All change requests, whether Member or non-Member in origin are publicly accessible. 3. OGC Interoperability Experiments can have non-Member participation. The only stipulation is that the non-Member must sign a participant agreement. Both the Galeon and the Oceans Interoperability Experiments have non-Member participation. 4. OGCNetwork is a public resource that anyone at anytime can provide and maintain content. OGCNetwork is a community resource. 5. Any draft/candidate standards are required to go to a 30 day public comment period. Anyone can provide comments (Members and non-Members). 6. All OGC face to face minutes are made publicly available (this was at the suggestion of the OSGeo community!) As you can see, there are many points of opportunity for continued collaboration between the GeoTIFF community and the OGC community. Perhaps even more importantly, the OSGeo and OGC Memorandum of Understanding provides the mechanism for providing free OGC membership to OSGeo participants. Specifically: OGC provides OSGeo with six one year Individual Memberships in the OGC at no charge, to be awarded to qualifying OSGeo members based on a selection process to be conducted by OSGeo. So, if you are willing to help, there is a mechanism! As to reference implementations and so forth, this is great! One of the requirements for a document becoming an OGC standard is that there be reference implementations. As to a community standard surviving the OGC process, well there is no intention on the part of the OGC to stop the community process. And if individuals such as yourself particpate and help in the process then we can insure that the communtiy process does survive. An excellent example is CityGML (www.citygml.org). CityGML started outside the OGC process, was brought into the OGC, and became a standard. The community process is still strong, vigorous, and the source of most of the change requests for a revision to the current OGC CityGML standard. The community process is an excellent source of expertise, development, testing, and creative ideas. No one wants such processes to stop. If they do, it may be because the community process was not viable to begin with (my perception). As to the OGC statement on axis order, the OSGeo community was included in the dialogue. The basic guidance is that the schema, documentation, or encoding shall state the access order. Specifically from the guidance, ". . . any documentation, encoding, payload, or service interface MUST state how the coordinate axis order is actually encoded in the coordinate strings." What is so onerous about that? If one does not honestly state how coordinates are actually encoded in a payload, then interoperability is broken. Finally, where in my email did I mention "evolve"?? Revisions to any OGC standard only happen if change requests are submitted and the community wishes to evolve a spec. Period. And the evolution can happen entirely outside the OGC and then change requests submitted into the OGC process. This is how KML is evolving. I may not allay your fears, but hopefully I have provided more food for thought. Regards Carl ----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Butler" <[hidden email]> To: "Carl Reed" <[hidden email]> Cc: "GeoTIFF" <[hidden email]> Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 2:07 PM Subject: Re: [Geotiff] GeoTIFF and the OGC > > On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Carl Reed wrote: > >> Dear GeoTIFF list - >> >> At the recent OGC meetings in Darmstadt, several OGC Members (large user >> organizations) asked whether there is any interest on the part of the >> OGC to move GeoTIFF into the OGC standards process and eventually make >> GeoTIFF an international standard. As we have done with other de-facto >> standards submitted into the OGC standards process, I would see very few >> (if any) normative changes to the document as it moves to a version 1.0 >> OGC standard. I know that the implementation community would not >> appreciate any "normative changes"! Further, as with KML, CF-NetCDF and >> other documents, we believe that maintaining a strong collaborative >> relationship with the existing GeoTIFF community is critical. >> >> As part of this process, the OGC and OGC Members would be responsible >> for reformatting the document into the proper template, marshalling >> volunteer resources to move the document through the OGC process, and to >> insure proper communication and engagement with the current GeoTIFF >> community. >> >> Your thoughts regarding this proposal are appreciated! >> > > My concerns with the approach the following: > > - OGC subsuming the current GeoTIFF specification and becoming its > ongoing authority effectively destroys any grass roots community that has > sprung up around geotiff because of OGC's membership requirements. > Casual or short-term-to-complete-this-job interest in geotiff is > effectively shut out from participating, though you could argue there > isn't much of this anyway. > - OGC hasn't demonstrated that it can pull community-developed > specifications into its world and have the community that birthed them > survive the process. Does OGC's sausage taste that much better than > sausage made outside the OGC? > - GeoTIFF already has a widely used and effective reference > implementation -- libgeotiff. That's more authority than a document > stamped with an organization's letterhead can ever hope to be. > > What benefits would this development be to the GeoTIFF community other > than forced acceptance of OGC-style axis order discipline? ;) Is the > main benefit is to be the ability to make changes to the specification > that implementers will have to implement to be compliant? Why try to > evolve a specification that has been widely used and unchanged for nearly > 10 years? _______________________________________________ Geotiff mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/geotiff |
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Frank Warmerdam
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In reply to this post
by Howard Butler
Howard Butler wrote:
> On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Carl Reed wrote: > >> Dear GeoTIFF list - >> >> At the recent OGC meetings in Darmstadt, several OGC Members (large >> user organizations) asked whether there is any interest on the part >> of the OGC to move GeoTIFF into the OGC standards process and >> eventually make GeoTIFF an international standard. As we have done >> with other de-facto standards submitted into the OGC standards >> process, I would see very few (if any) normative changes to the >> document as it moves to a version 1.0 OGC standard. I know that the >> implementation community would not appreciate any "normative >> changes"! Further, as with KML, CF-NetCDF and other documents, we >> believe that maintaining a strong collaborative relationship with >> the existing GeoTIFF community is critical. >> >> As part of this process, the OGC and OGC Members would be >> responsible for reformatting the document into the proper template, >> marshalling volunteer resources to move the document through the OGC >> process, and to insure proper communication and engagement with the >> current GeoTIFF community. >> >> Your thoughts regarding this proposal are appreciated! Carl, I am generally supportive of this process. My main concern is that the non-OGC portion of the GeoTIFF community be able to view the draft specification as it is under development in order to provide feedback. Howard Butler wrote: > My concerns with the approach the following: ... > What benefits would this development be to the GeoTIFF community other > than forced acceptance of OGC-style axis order discipline? ;) Is the > main benefit is to be the ability to make changes to the specification > that implementers will have to implement to be compliant? Why try to > evolve a specification that has been widely used and unchanged for > nearly 10 years? I personally hope the somewhat rigorous OGC process will help hammer out various unclear points in the current specification. Parameters that go with projection methods, meaning of pixel-is-point, and clarity on how GeoTIFF relates to the evolving EPSG database for instance. Once the existing GeoTIFF 1.0 is refined and clarified - perhaps as an OGC GeoTIFF 1.1 specification, I would also be interested in development of a moderately more sophisticated specification adding preferred datum shift transformation parameters, and more completely supporting vertical datums. Possibly even discussing how to carry OGC GML or FGDC style metadata payloads in TIFF. As Siri Jodha mentions, the NASA SPD process for community based data standards would also be acceptable to me. The problem with that in the past, as noted, is that myself and another volunteer ran out of juice to follow it through. Before launching down the OGC route I would want to know that there is one or more volunteers willing to take on the editorial work. I also do feel that an OGC standard will have broader respect globally compared to a NASA SPD standard. Lastly, I would like to point out that I have agonized over the lack of an accepted mechanism to update or refine the existing GeoTIFF specification. While I'm not super keen on the procedural overhead of OGC, it does provide a respected mechanism to reach consensus and approve a document. I am interested to hear from other members of the GeoTIFF community (for my purposes I mean this mailing list) who would be interested in participating in a GeoTIFF working group at OGC. I'm particularly interested in those who could be their as representatives of existing OGC members. I would be interested in participating, likely via an OSGeo OGC "slot" under the OSGeo / OGC MOU. However, I am not able to make it to very many OGC meetings in person and I know myself well enough to realize I'm not the right person to take on much of the editorial work. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [hidden email] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Programmer for Rent _______________________________________________ Geotiff mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/geotiff |
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