Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI
Hi Scott, Thank you for OGC's openness to discuss ideas for reviewing standardisation of LiDAR and other point cloud data. I have informed our LiDAR colleagues to be in contact with you directly to discuss ideas further . It is also good to know that there will be Standards Openness ad hoc session at the upcoming TC meeting in Barcelona on Monday (0900 - 0955) which might be of interest to some of our members who are planning to attend the TC meetings. Best wishes, Suchith From: ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Scott Simmons [ssimm...@opengeospatial.org] Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 4:15 PM To: Stefan Keller Cc: OSGeo Discussions; Even Rouault; ica-osgeo-l...@lists.osgeo.org; bo...@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI (note: resend to make sure this gets on the lists) Hi Stefan, I will make a few comments! GeoPackage: the OGC Compliance Program develops conformance test suites for OGC Standards after the Standards have been officially adopted. This process takes time and requires thorough testing itself. A GeoPackage test suite has not yet been completed, but you can see a list of tests and roadmap for test development here: http://cite.opengeospatial.org/roadmap The most complete listing of implementations for GeoPackage is here: http://www.geopackage.org/#implementations With another registry here: http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/byspec Yes, I know that the two registries have some differences - something we are working on in OGC to synchronize! With respect to support of an OGC Standard by any organization, the OGC membership provides the Standards as free and open and thus, they can be implemented by anyone; we don’t rate nor comment on the degree to which an organization implements the Standard unless the implementation is submitted for formal Certification by OGC. LiDAR: the OGC is certainly open to reviewing standardization of LiDAR and other point cloud data. This thread has expressed interest for further discussion and I have been approached my other OGC members on the topic. For anyone attending the upcoming OGC TC meeting in Barcelona - find me and we can talk LiDAR. I will be happy to organize a telecon or face-to-face discussion at a future TC meeting to plan a way forward on this topic. I also recommend that interested people bring up the subject on the OGC 3D Information Management Domain Working Group (3DIM DWG) mailing list: 3dim...@lists.opengeospatial.orgmailto:3dim...@lists.opengeospatial.org Best Regards, Scott Scott Simmons Executive Director, Standards Program Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) tel +1 970 682 1922 mob +1 970 214 9467 ssimm...@opengeospatial.orgmailto:ssimm...@opengeospatial.org The OGC: Making Location Count… www.opengeospatial.orghttp://www.opengeospatial.org On Mar 3, 2015, at 1:18 AM, Stefan Keller sfkel...@gmail.commailto:sfkel...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-03-03 7:13 GMT+01:00 Even Rouault even.roua...@spatialys.commailto:even.roua...@spatialys.com wrote: Hi Cameron, ... Currently there's no finalized conformance test suite available for GeoPackage to test implementations, so there's no official reference implementation or conformant implementations. I'd wish Scott or somebody from OGC could comment on this (and this thread in general). * It is probably not appropriate for OSGeo as an organisation to directly point out ESRI's lack of support for GeoPackage write capability. I agree. The best marketing, if needed, would be to point at our implementations that do support write capability. Be aware that it's not only read/write support one should report and request in order to make a standard format an alternative to Shapefiles. For ArcGIS it's also edit capabilities (for whatever reason...). Yours, S. 2015-03-03 7:13 GMT+01:00 Even Rouault even.roua...@spatialys.commailto:even.roua...@spatialys.com: Hi Cameron, It is difficult for OSGeo to stop a vendor from promoting their product, or promoting a specific lock in strategy. Of course. That was exactly my point. But we can: * Support the OGC in developing an OGC standard for LiDAR. Once a standard is in place, there is a much stronger reason to make use of that Open Standard. In particular, many national government agencies have policies which promote standards over proprietary interfaces. With my mostly uninformed eyes in that topic, I don't know if OGC is the most relevant organization in that matter. It seems that the ASPRS would be a more natural host as it has already published the spec of the (uncompressed) LAS format: http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange- Activities.html I'm not sure about the LASzip format however, the compressed one, which is the one that ESRI has cloned into zLAS. I skimmed through
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI
Stefan, That a proprietary vendor decides not to implement a standard in its products is mainly its problem (as well as the one of its customers). Especially as they are plenty of FOSS alternatives that implement the standard! So I'd say it is a selling point for FOSS. The annoying thing here is that a proprietary vendor aggressively pushes his *closed* format and tries to undermine an open format implemented by FOSS. So it really harms the FOSS community. In that matter, the Geoservices REST API episode would have been less critical as the protocol had been at least opened... Even Dear all, dear OSGeo Board While supporting this LAS related initiative I'd like to draw your attention to a potentially similar use case which is at least of same relevance: In April 2014 Esri officially announced support for GeoPackage vector in version 10.2.2 and raster in 10.3: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/04/14/support-for-ogc-geopackages-in -arcgis/ (Support for OGC GeoPackage in ArcGIS) Now Esri support confirmed that in ArcgIS Desktop 10.3 only read-only access is possible. So, there's still no write nor edit capability (and no ArcGIS Server no Runtime) despite this FAQ: http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/42567 (What versions of the OGC GeoPackage standard are supported?) I'm still looking for an answer for an Enhancement Request but I'm really concerned about Esri's commitment to (promised OGC) standards. Yours, S. 2015-03-01 22:38 GMT+01:00 Suchith Anand suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk: Colleagues, I see these kind of developments also directly affecting Open Principles in Geo Education that Geo for All , OSGeo, ICA all stand for and are working together in our common mission of making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. Geo for All will take a stand on this as it not only affects our Academic colleagues and students working in LIDAR research and teaching but will have long term impacts on Open Principles in Geo Education. We will work to put our ideas in the Open Letter from OSGeo explaining this. Geo for All started from very humble beginnings and this was only possible because academic colleagues globally came together to change the status of Geo education. For decades even though there was great progress in GIS technologies, educational opportunities esp. in developing and poor countries were very small. This is now changing dramatically thanks to the efforts of our colleagues from Nepal to Uruguay. We got excellent support from all sectors (universities, industry , governments etc) but to my surprise ESRI was the only proprietary vendor who was trying to undermine this initiative indirectly from the very start. I still cannot understand why this particular vendor wants to do that. I really hope the proprietors of this company will also support Open Principles in Geo Education (not just telling externally on Openness but actually practicing this). We want to have good relations with everyone in the Geospatial domain , so our hand of friendship is always open. So please let us all work together. Hardware costs are (and will) keep coming down, internet access is increasing (and will keep increasing) even in developing countries and with free and open source software, even poor schools in developing countries are getting small computer labs established ( i know this from my experience in India) .The convergence of all these factors with a great team of dedicated people is changing geoeducation forever. I strongly believe access of good quality education is everyones birthright and now we are for first time in history getting opportunity to make this possible. We will not accept putting artificial barriers like high cost proprietary software (which quite frankly they won't be able to even think of affording) which will continue denying quality education opportunities for millions of students globally (both in developed and developing countries). So why should i care? Because i learned one of the most important lessons in my life in my childhood from my grandmother (who though did not get the opportunity of proper education herself taught me the importance of the values of sharing and about Vasudeva Kudumbam which means We all belong to one large Universal family and Geo for All is for my Universal family and i will do everything in my abilities to make sure education opportunities are open to all. Best wishes, Suchith From: ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter [cameron.shor...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2015 7:37 PM To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); Paul Ramsey; Carl Reed Cc: P Kishor; Scott Simmons; ica-osgeo-l...@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs]
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI
Even, You wrote: The annoying thing here is that a proprietary vendor aggressively pushes his *closed* format and tries to undermine an open format implemented by FOSS. Youre right. But to me the case is quite similar with respect to undermine GeoPackage despite release announcements and OGC standards commitment. -S. 2015-03-02 11:37 GMT+01:00 Even Rouault even.roua...@spatialys.com: Stefan, That a proprietary vendor decides not to implement a standard in its products is mainly its problem (as well as the one of its customers). Especially as they are plenty of FOSS alternatives that implement the standard! So I'd say it is a selling point for FOSS. The annoying thing here is that a proprietary vendor aggressively pushes his *closed* format and tries to undermine an open format implemented by FOSS. So it really harms the FOSS community. In that matter, the Geoservices REST API episode would have been less critical as the protocol had been at least opened... Even Dear all, dear OSGeo Board While supporting this LAS related initiative I'd like to draw your attention to a potentially similar use case which is at least of same relevance: In April 2014 Esri officially announced support for GeoPackage vector in version 10.2.2 and raster in 10.3: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/04/14/support-for-ogc-geopackages-in -arcgis/ (Support for OGC GeoPackage in ArcGIS) Now Esri support confirmed that in ArcgIS Desktop 10.3 only read-only access is possible. So, there's still no write nor edit capability (and no ArcGIS Server no Runtime) despite this FAQ: http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/42567 (What versions of the OGC GeoPackage standard are supported?) I'm still looking for an answer for an Enhancement Request but I'm really concerned about Esri's commitment to (promised OGC) standards. Yours, S. 2015-03-01 22:38 GMT+01:00 Suchith Anand suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk: Colleagues, I see these kind of developments also directly affecting Open Principles in Geo Education that Geo for All , OSGeo, ICA all stand for and are working together in our common mission of making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. Geo for All will take a stand on this as it not only affects our Academic colleagues and students working in LIDAR research and teaching but will have long term impacts on Open Principles in Geo Education. We will work to put our ideas in the Open Letter from OSGeo explaining this. Geo for All started from very humble beginnings and this was only possible because academic colleagues globally came together to change the status of Geo education. For decades even though there was great progress in GIS technologies, educational opportunities esp. in developing and poor countries were very small. This is now changing dramatically thanks to the efforts of our colleagues from Nepal to Uruguay. We got excellent support from all sectors (universities, industry , governments etc) but to my surprise ESRI was the only proprietary vendor who was trying to undermine this initiative indirectly from the very start. I still cannot understand why this particular vendor wants to do that. I really hope the proprietors of this company will also support Open Principles in Geo Education (not just telling externally on Openness but actually practicing this). We want to have good relations with everyone in the Geospatial domain , so our hand of friendship is always open. So please let us all work together. Hardware costs are (and will) keep coming down, internet access is increasing (and will keep increasing) even in developing countries and with free and open source software, even poor schools in developing countries are getting small computer labs established ( i know this from my experience in India) .The convergence of all these factors with a great team of dedicated people is changing geoeducation forever. I strongly believe access of good quality education is everyones birthright and now we are for first time in history getting opportunity to make this possible. We will not accept putting artificial barriers like high cost proprietary software (which quite frankly they won't be able to even think of affording) which will continue denying quality education opportunities for millions of students globally (both in developed and developing countries). So why should i care? Because i learned one of the most important lessons in my life in my childhood from my grandmother (who though did not get the opportunity of proper education herself taught me the importance of the values of sharing and about Vasudeva Kudumbam which means We all belong to one large Universal family and Geo for All is for my Universal family and i will do everything in my abilities to make sure education opportunities are open to all. Best wishes, Suchith
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI
Colleagues, I see these kind of developments also directly affecting Open Principles in Geo Education that Geo for All , OSGeo, ICA all stand for and are working together in our common mission of making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. Geo for All will take a stand on this as it not only affects our Academic colleagues and students working in LIDAR research and teaching but will have long term impacts on Open Principles in Geo Education. We will work to put our ideas in the Open Letter from OSGeo explaining this. Geo for All started from very humble beginnings and this was only possible because academic colleagues globally came together to change the status of Geo education. For decades even though there was great progress in GIS technologies, educational opportunities esp. in developing and poor countries were very small. This is now changing dramatically thanks to the efforts of our colleagues from Nepal to Uruguay. We got excellent support from all sectors (universities, industry , governments etc) but to my surprise ESRI was the only proprietary vendor who was trying to undermine this initiative indirectly from the very start. I still cannot understand why this particular vendor wants to do that. I really hope the proprietors of this company will also support Open Principles in Geo Education (not just telling externally on Openness but actually practicing this). We want to have good relations with everyone in the Geospatial domain , so our hand of friendship is always open. So please let us all work together. Hardware costs are (and will) keep coming down, internet access is increasing (and will keep increasing) even in developing countries and with free and open source software, even poor schools in developing countries are getting small computer labs established ( i know this from my experience in India) .The convergence of all these factors with a great team of dedicated people is changing geoeducation forever. I strongly believe access of good quality education is everyones birthright and now we are for first time in history getting opportunity to make this possible. We will not accept putting artificial barriers like high cost proprietary software (which quite frankly they won't be able to even think of affording) which will continue denying quality education opportunities for millions of students globally (both in developed and developing countries). So why should i care? Because i learned one of the most important lessons in my life in my childhood from my grandmother (who though did not get the opportunity of proper education herself taught me the importance of the values of sharing and about Vasudeva Kudumbam which means We all belong to one large Universal family and Geo for All is for my Universal family and i will do everything in my abilities to make sure education opportunities are open to all. Best wishes, Suchith From: ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter [cameron.shor...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2015 7:37 PM To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); Paul Ramsey; Carl Reed Cc: P Kishor; Scott Simmons; ica-osgeo-l...@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI What would strengthen a position for use of Open LIDAR interfaces would be if such an Open LIDAR interface were introduced into the OGC standards program. Carl, I'd be interested to hear you (or someone else from the OGC) explain how people should approach initiating an Open LIDAR standard, and how much effort / cost would be required to do so. The OSGeo community can then assess whether there is sufficient motivation to initiate such development of a standard. Patrick, For an Open Letter from OSGeo, it would be a very powerful statement if we can list a number of influential organisations who will commit to developing an open, interoperable standard. (This can be a section of the open letter with signatures). On 2/03/2015 4:57 am, Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX) wrote: Paul, I would care to refine the 'yawn' context of 'doing the right thing,' that of standing up to actions that directly contravene an organization's 'open exchange' mission. This would seem the kind of *engaged integrity* quite apart from one deserving a yawn. If your kids do something directly contrary to what the family needs for a healthy exchange of information, if a yawn is the response, there are even more serious issues at stake. -Patrick -Original Message- From: Paul Ramsey [mailto:pram...@cleverelephant.ca] Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2015 9:32 AM To: Carl Reed Cc: Cameron Shorter; P Kishor; Suchith Anand; Scott Simmons; OSGeo Discussions; Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); OSGeo-Board; ica-osgeo-l...@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] The
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI
Dear all, dear OSGeo Board While supporting this LAS related initiative I'd like to draw your attention to a potentially similar use case which is at least of same relevance: In April 2014 Esri officially announced support for GeoPackage vector in version 10.2.2 and raster in 10.3: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/04/14/support-for-ogc-geopackages-in-arcgis/ (Support for OGC GeoPackage in ArcGIS) Now Esri support confirmed that in ArcgIS Desktop 10.3 only read-only access is possible. So, there's still no write nor edit capability (and no ArcGIS Server no Runtime) despite this FAQ: http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/42567 (What versions of the OGC GeoPackage standard are supported?) I'm still looking for an answer for an Enhancement Request but I'm really concerned about Esri's commitment to (promised OGC) standards. Yours, S. 2015-03-01 22:38 GMT+01:00 Suchith Anand suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk: Colleagues, I see these kind of developments also directly affecting Open Principles in Geo Education that Geo for All , OSGeo, ICA all stand for and are working together in our common mission of making geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. Geo for All will take a stand on this as it not only affects our Academic colleagues and students working in LIDAR research and teaching but will have long term impacts on Open Principles in Geo Education. We will work to put our ideas in the Open Letter from OSGeo explaining this. Geo for All started from very humble beginnings and this was only possible because academic colleagues globally came together to change the status of Geo education. For decades even though there was great progress in GIS technologies, educational opportunities esp. in developing and poor countries were very small. This is now changing dramatically thanks to the efforts of our colleagues from Nepal to Uruguay. We got excellent support from all sectors (universities, industry , governments etc) but to my surprise ESRI was the only proprietary vendor who was trying to undermine this initiative indirectly from the very start. I still cannot understand why this particular vendor wants to do that. I really hope the proprietors of this company will also support Open Principles in Geo Education (not just telling externally on Openness but actually practicing this). We want to have good relations with everyone in the Geospatial domain , so our hand of friendship is always open. So please let us all work together. Hardware costs are (and will) keep coming down, internet access is increasing (and will keep increasing) even in developing countries and with free and open source software, even poor schools in developing countries are getting small computer labs established ( i know this from my experience in India) .The convergence of all these factors with a great team of dedicated people is changing geoeducation forever. I strongly believe access of good quality education is everyones birthright and now we are for first time in history getting opportunity to make this possible. We will not accept putting artificial barriers like high cost proprietary software (which quite frankly they won't be able to even think of affording) which will continue denying quality education opportunities for millions of students globally (both in developed and developing countries). So why should i care? Because i learned one of the most important lessons in my life in my childhood from my grandmother (who though did not get the opportunity of proper education herself taught me the importance of the values of sharing and about Vasudeva Kudumbam which means We all belong to one large Universal family and Geo for All is for my Universal family and i will do everything in my abilities to make sure education opportunities are open to all. Best wishes, Suchith From: ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [ica-osgeo-labs-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter [cameron.shor...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2015 7:37 PM To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); Paul Ramsey; Carl Reed Cc: P Kishor; Scott Simmons; ica-osgeo-l...@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] The LAS format, the ASPRS, and the “LAZ clone” by ESRI What would strengthen a position for use of Open LIDAR interfaces would be if such an Open LIDAR interface were introduced into the OGC standards program. Carl, I'd be interested to hear you (or someone else from the OGC) explain how people should approach initiating an Open LIDAR standard, and how much effort / cost would be required to do so. The OSGeo community can then assess whether there is sufficient motivation to initiate such development of a standard. Patrick, For an Open Letter from OSGeo, it would be a very powerful statement if we can list a number
