Frank is out and about trying to help us on the EPSG data front ... Thanks for taking action Frank, can you CC the devel list on further communication - not sure what other projects are effected.
Jody -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Incubator] EPSG "Use of the data" Requirements Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:47:58 -0400 From: Frank Warmerdam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: OSGeo-incubator <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Bernard, I am writing on behalf of several open source projects currently using coordinate system lists derived from the EPSG database. I have copied the following from the README .doc file distributed with a somewhat recent version of the database: 1) All data pertinent to a specific coordinate reference system must be copied without modification and all related pages/records must be included; 2) All components of this data set pertinent to any given coordinate reference system must be distributed together (complete distribution of all components of the data set is preferred, but the OGP recognises the need for a more limited distribution); My concern is that these projects mostly just distributed lists of coordinate systems derived from the EPSG files, but expressed in another format such as OGC Well Known Text, or PROJ.4 initialization strings. The problem with this is that such representations clearly violate items (1) and (2). That is, they don't include all data about the coordinate system, nor do they include all related records. For instance, fields like "remarks" cannot be represented in WKT. And related records such as from the area of use table are generally not included. So, I would like to petition the OGP Surveying and Positioning committee to relax items (1) and (2) to not being requirements, but rather requests. I would add that even the requirement that information be copied without modification is hard to adhere to, when some representations do not support the form the data is presented in the EPSG databse. For instance, the OGC WKT format only supports specifying ellipsoids as semi-major length and inverse flattening. Thus, ellipsoids specified in the EPSG dataset as semi-major and semi-minor will be distributed in a modified form, in violation of (1). I realize that the OGP has little interest in bringing legal action over such minor technical violations of the use terms, but as part of the formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation there is an ongoing effort to bring our projects (GDAL and Geotool in this case) into *strict* compliance with the licensing terms of all components. I hope that you will also see value in modifing your terms so that they can be adhered to in a variety of usage scenarios. I would add that similar issues apply to libgeotiff, PROJ.4 and a variety of other packages. In addition to affecting a variety of open source packages, these issues also affect a wide variety of proprietary software vendors who build on these packages. For instance, the GeoTIFF using community is "at risk". Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
