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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Subject: | GISList: OGC & standards, GIS, etc. |
| Date: |
12/10/2002 02:27:09 PM |
| From: |
Anthony Quartararo |
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Recent comments by list regulars on various related issues spurred me to
look at this issue. First, we are not an OGC member, and no plans to
join in the near future. I do applaud the ideological efforts that got
the OGC started, but I disagree with just about everything it does and
is at this point. Some quick crunching reveals that OGC's annual
revenue is a little under $2M a year. That's made up of over 230
organizations, mostly GIS vendors, paying hefty fees for the "privilege"
to participate in an "Open" GIS Consortium. The average membership fee
is around $8K per year. But this is skewed by Universities getting a
major break on the annual dues. There are only a handful of major
players, and there's no mystery as to who they are. So, by default, it
is yet another expensive vehicle for the major vendors to leverage their
products and solidify their strangle hold on the market, only with an
added endorsement by OGC. This seems rather circular to me.
In addition, no doubt it costs 2-3X the annual membership of an
organization to dedicate the internal resources to work with OGC, and
then, if there is a product that gets tested and passes as "conformant"
to some OGC spec, then the vendor gets that added privilege of paying
more hefty fees (this time based on annual revenue) to make that
trademarked claim?
The OGC specifications leave the market just like all those ISO
standards have, numbed, disenfranchised and leery of marketing claims.
A company can be certified to ISO and have 100% conformance to the
standard and still create crap for products: likewise, a company's
product can still "conform" to an OGC spec, and it will still be slow,
be expensive, crash, become obsolete, contain bugs, conflict with
Microsoft products (ok, this one is on Microsoft...), and in general,
disappoint and frustrate the user, BUT still be conformant.
An internet lifecycle is still about 3-4 months in terms of technology
development, and even despite the global economic doldrums,
communications technology still forges ahead at a brisk pace. In fact,
4G is now a reality, and 3G is barely making a dent in the market. The
point that Dimitri made in an earlier post about OGC taking forever to
implement things is not unwarranted: management by committee, especially
one with OGC's composition is just painfully slow. There is every bit
as much politicking going on at OGC and major member organizations as
there is at the UN these days. The diplomacy is first rate, the
bureaucracy is considerable and the interests of the average GIS
consumer is lost somewhere along the way.
Given the implicit value and importance that this industry brings to the
world (yes, that value is enormously understated), I think OGC and
others can and should do a much better job at moving things along,
thinking a bit more out of the box, or even just throw the box out and
start with a blank page, however unpopular that may be.
Anthony
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