Hi Martin,
Based on your description below, it appears that Lewis Graham is using
deliberate technical obfuscation under the banner of ASPRS, which is
tarnishing the technical credibility of ASPRS.
Oliver's detailed rebuttal is good, but is only valuable if a number of
people of influence who read and are swayed by the rebuttal.
Roland,
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on publishing a correction of
facts, as presented by Oliver (or similar)?
Further, in future, you might find it helpful to consult with experts in
Open Standards prior to publishing, in order to:
a. Correct facts before publishing, and hence provide a more credible
publication. We can put you in touch with appropriate experts.
b. Provide a balanced article, with different opinions.
Would you like us to help source contacts that you could call upon for
an opinion?
Martin,
I hope we don't have to go as far as building upon our previous Open
Letter, which would effectively publicly discredit Lewis (again) and
would tarnish the reputation of Lewis/ASPRS and wouldn't look good for
publications presenting un-countered FUD.
Scott,
I suspect the OGC might be interested in helping counter the FUD being
spread. Possibly by approaching offenders behind the scene and
suggesting they desist with the FUD, or by respectfully countering the
FUD in public forums.
Martin, Scott,
I'd be interested to hear how the OGC Point Cloud working group has been
progressing.
Is positive progress being made?
(Feel free to point at a blog or web page or similar which might already
have such details).
Warm regards,
Cameron Shorter
On 3/10/2015 11:46 pm, Martin Isenburg wrote:
Hello,
I was hoping that Lewis Graham would see the futility of furthering
his incorrect claims on the "dangers" of the LGPL license for
commercial projects (and his other odd statements) but he continues to
do so not just in private but also in his role as the Chair of the
ASRPS LAS Working Group This gives his FUD non-sense a very prominent
outlet in front of very influential people, so OSGeo should probably
respond to this a bit more loudly than usual.
In the "LiDAR Sidebar" at the ASPRS UAS Reno conference [1] there was
a discussion on point cloud formats that was more or less a direct
consequence of the "Open Letter" by OSGeo [2]. Lewis continued to
claim that it was impossible to make LASzip an official format because
I would be unwilling to donated it under an MIT license to the ASPRS
(note: i do not even remember being asked) and that an LGPL would be
impossible and "dangerous" for commercial companies to work with
(note: nevermind the 55+ companies that already do [3]).
So I emailed the participants (my dial-in connection was shakey) the
following:
"Here a detailed rebuttal of Lewis' "LGPL of Martin's LASzip
implementation is dangerous" non-sense:
http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/lidar-news-publishes-uninformed-gpl-rant/
And yes, the currently available open LASzip format implementation
(!!!) comes with a "static linking exception" because some new devices
do not support dynamic linking well. Would be good to get someone to
sponsor the creation of an open LASzip format specification (!!!) so
anyone can reimplement it and give their resulting implementation
whatever license they see best fit. A license is only attached to a
particular implementation. From an open LASzip format specification
anyone could write their own implementation (closed or open with any
license they want)."
To which Lewis answered (just repeating the same old FUD):
"Rather than entering into an inane debate over licensing with Martin,
I suggest anyone who is concerned check with their intellectual
property attorney prior to incorporating third party software into
internal build software, regardless of the license type of that third
party software. We do a lot of software consulting and most of our
more savvy clients clearly specify what type of licensing can be
incorporated into the composite deliverables.
I also suggest that the world of software development and deployment
has become far too complex to continue to use the undefined term “open
source.” For example, some customers have source code to the GeoCue
production software under license. Is that Open Source? I suggest
instead that we use terminology such as “binaries available under
license XYZ” or “source suitable for compilation available under
license ABX.”"
I can not believe that Lewis himself actually believes his own
statements but uses them tactically to spread fear, uncertainty, and
doubt. I am not sure why. Maybe in order to stall the standardization
process of LAS and LAZ because he is somehow afraid it will loosen his
grip onto the LAS format?
Regards,
Martin @rapidlasso
[1]
http://uasreno.org/2015/09/09/asprs-adds-lidar-sidebar-to-reno-program/
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[3] http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support
On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Martin Isenburg
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> We (Oliver and me) had contacted the (new) editor (Roland Mangold
who is cc-ed) last week and suggested to use the contents of this blog
article
>
>
http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/lidar-news-publishes-uninformed-gpl-rant/
>
> authored by Oliver Doepner as a factual rebuttal of Lewis Graham's
FUD rant on GPL/LGPL for publishing in the next issue of the LiDAR
Magazine (the two-month ago rebranded LiDAR News magazine). I have no
final word from the Roland yet but our communication suggested that
this would happen. Please check Oliver's column for any errors (should
you care) so he can correct them prior to this being published.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martin @rapidlasso
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 11:52 AM, Jo Cook
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>> I think this is something that we at OSGeo should definitely
respond to. Perhaps we could contact the magazine and explain that
there were some factual errors in the article, and ask for a chance to
respond?
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Johan Van de Wauw
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Martin Isenburg
>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Another curious thing is that I (and the open source license
LGPL) was
>>> > attacked vehemently in a recent column called "Open Source
Mania" by Lewis
>>> > Graham that was published in the LiDAR News magazine. Viewer
discretion
>>> > advised and parental guidance suggested ... you will not like
this FUD
>>> > attack:
>>> >
>>> >
http://www.lidarmag.com/PDF/LiDARNewsMagazine_Graham-OpenSourceMania_Vol5No4.pdf
>>> >
>>>
>>> I read the article and there are a lot of statements there which
are false.
>>> " if you touch a piece of GPL code with the nine foot pole of
>>> launching it with a Python script, that script must now be GPLed"
>>> not true
>>>
>>> "Suppose you have developed some very, very clever algorithm on which
>>> you and your university have applied for a patent. If you have coded
>>> your algorithm and used any GPL whatsoever, you just GPLed your
>>> patent. The patent rights effectively transfer to the Open Software
>>> Foundation for free distribution."
>>>
>>> Completely untrue. The Open Software Foundation does not exist. You
>>> don't transfer patent rights at all. A well known counter-example is
>>> the algortihm for MP3, where the code (lame) was released under LGPL.
>>>
>>> I think as OSGeo we should reply to the statements, this is an attack
>>> on our community. Perhaps we can ask someone from the Free Software
>>> Foundation Europe to help write a response?
>>>
>>> Kind Regards,
>>> Johan
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jo Cook
>> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom,
Surrey, KT18 7RL, UK
>> t:+44 7930 524 155
>> iShare - Data integration and publishing platform
>>
>> *****************************************
>>
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Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT
no. 864201149.
>
>
>
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