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| Subject: | RE: GISList: RE: OGC and Standards, - a response |
| Date: |
12/12/2002 04:20:52 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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I should know better than joining this, but I really could not resist
contributing a lengthy rant commenting on a few of the points that have been
raised. I've combined notes from a couple of different emails into one:
> > So what is the compelling reason to become an
> > OGC member ? How many open
> > source (GIS) software providers are there ?
>
> Very simple - do you want a voice in the future of our industry
> or not? You
Actually, the most effective way to have a voice in the future of our
industry is to create cool software that provides better technology and
better quality, is easier to use and has all the features people want, and
then you sell it for 1/20th of the cost of the software sold by legacy
companies. You make it easy to buy the software through Internet so anyone
in the world can buy it at the same price. You put all your effort into
evolving the software rapidly, with two or three major releases a year so
that users know they won't have to wait years for their "wishlist" items to
appear on their desktop. Price the software so low so that while the legacy
companies struggle to sell a few thousand licenses you sell hundreds of
thousands or even millions of copies.
That's the business plan used by Dell and similar to wipe out the
minicomputer companies. It did not happen overnight, but year by year the
legacy guys found their market share eroding as more and more people
realized that it was really, really stupid to overpay for obsolete
technology. After a while, even government agencies like NASA got the
message.
Follow that business plan and you wipe out the dinosaurs and you'll have all
the "voice" you want. Anybody who thinks the future of GIS is to keep
reselling '80's and early '90's technology for $1500 to $50,000 a seat
should get their head examined.
Lest anyone think this is unrealistic, do a thought experiment: suppose the
price for a hiqh quality GIS program that did everything in the ArcInfo 8
family, but faster and easier, plus everything you can do with, say, ERDAS,
plus Internet map serving,... suppose the price for all that fell to $250 to
$300 quantity one? Could ESRI or any of the other legacy GIS vendors
survive with an average sales price (allowing for volume discounts) of under
$200 a seat? I don't think so.
What does this mean to OGC? What would it mean for OGC to be marginalized
as an organization comprised of legacy vendors selling a small number of
overpriced units to a handful of repressive government organizations? Will
such a group have any "voice" in the mainstream market, or will the "voice"
be heard only by those who buy $500 hammers and $2000 toilet seats?
> I like to quote something attributed to Albert Einstein: "As a
> young man, my
> fondest dream was to become a Geographer. However, while working
> in the Patent
> Office, I thought deeply about the matter and concluded that it
> was far too
> difficult a subject. With some reluctance, I then turned to Physics as a
> substitute." Trying to solve semantic interoperability issues in the
> geospatial domain is very complex.
>
Could you have misunderstood the puckish humor of the good Dr. Einstein? In
point of fact, the key idea of geometrodynamics (as Einstein called his
theory of general relativity) is the deformation of surfaces in 4-space
using a more general form of mathematics that one finds (in the much
simpler, less general case) in the transformation of surfaces in geographic
projections. Anyone who knows the history of how difficult Einstein found
the mathematics of the general case and his use of Minkowski to help him
sort out his ideas in this area would immediately recognize his comment as
the clever joke that it is.
From a technical perspective, solving semantic interoperability issues in
the geospatial domain is a fairly trivial problem. It is cutting through
all the political issues raised by legacy players, each anxious to defend
his turf, that is the Gordian knot. Perhaps, like Alexander cutting the
Gordian knot with one stroke of his sword, it is best solved not by catering
to legacy intrigue but rather through decisive and novel iniatives?
> of their business process and software development plans. Other members
> include key geospatial stakeholders, such as: FGDC, US Census, US EPA, UK
> Ordnance Survey, US DOT, US FEMA, ERDC (Corp of Engineers), City of San
You also forgot to mention NASA and NIMA. As usual, the disreputable nature
of some of characters involved gives the lie to the term "open." It would be
hard to imagine a greater group of GIS nazis than, say, the Ordnance Survey,
NASA, EPA, the Census Bureau and NIMA. All of these groups have spent a lot
of resources to make sure that public data cannot get into the hands of the
public. Let's conside
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