[Freegis-list] relationship between Open Source GIS and open standards

[Allan Doyle]

Perhaps a little late, I'm just back from a short vacation...

It's a little hard to decide what the cause and effect relationship is 
in terms of FOSS and open standards. However, in a study I participated 
in for NASA, we determined that there seemed to be a higher acceptance 
rate for standards or specs that had open source implementations than 
for those that did not. This was based largely on anecdotal evidence, 
not on any hard numbers, however.

I also think that by adopting open standards, FOSS packages can 
themselves interoperate and thus provide a broader solution in a given 
space. Clients and servers can be developed by different projects that 
can specialize on their forte.

Note that open standards need not come from standards bodies. GeoTIFF 
is a good example of a standard that has no official status but has 
served well in both open and closed source worlds.

	Allan

On Mar 14, 2005, at 15:21, James Macgill wrote:

> Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I was wondering why there is such a strong link between Open Source 
>> GIS  and open standards, such as the OGC standards. Some of the 
>> reasons I could  think of are:
>>
>> -OGC often uses Open Source projects as their reference 
>> implementation  (Deegree for WMS, Geoserver for WFS, Deegree for 
>> CS-W)
>
> Thats not a driver as these projects were well established and using 
> OGC
> interfaces long before the Reference Implementation effort.
>
>>
>> -Open Source projects sometimes start without having a native 
>> interface,  so when they are in search of an interface they are more 
>> likely to end up  implementing open standard interfaces
>
> Yes, that is a big part of it but I can also you another... It solves /
> prevents arguments.
>
> The GeoTools project (the library project behind GeoServer and uDIG) is
> modeled very closely on the OGC specifications.  With a distributed
> devlopment group with many different backgrounds havning an 'authority'
> to point at can be very helpful.  There are often many different ways 
> of
> doing the same thing, and deciding which is the 'right' way can be very
> very time consuming (arguments go round in circles) so having a
> 'standard' to code towards can keep a large group of developers 
> together
> and going in the same direction.  Less of an inssue in the closed 
> source
> world where a boss can say - we are going to do it 'this way' - and the
> team will follow.
>
> There are two other points I would add...
>
> 1 Completness.  The OGC standards are written with input from a large
> number of individuals and companies with a wide range of requirements.
> Whilst they won't cover EVERY situation they do tend to cover more than
> indiviual developers will think of up front.
>
> 2 Migration.  an Open Source project can say to a potential client 'Use
> our project and if dosn't work out, or if our tools are not
> fast/stable/functional enough for you then you can switch, at any time,
> to the products from comercial vendor X, Y or Z.  We all use the same
> standards so try us out for free and feel safe that you can switch over
> easily if things go wrong'.  i.e. it takes some of the fear out of 
> using
> an open source project if you know that it follows a standard and that
> it can be replaced with other tools that follow the same standard.  Of
> course the hope is that the client will never make the switch...
>
> James
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> https://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
>