[Geotiff] GeoTIFF and the OGC

[Howard Butler]

On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Carl Reed wrote:

> Dear GeoTIFF list -
>
> At the recent OGC meetings in Darmstadt, several OGC Members (large  
> user organizations) asked whether there is any interest on the part  
> of the OGC to move GeoTIFF into the OGC standards process and  
> eventually make GeoTIFF an international standard. As we have done  
> with other de-facto standards submitted into the OGC standards  
> process, I would see very few (if any) normative changes to the  
> document as it moves to a version 1.0 OGC standard. I know that the  
> implementation community would not appreciate any "normative  
> changes"! Further, as with KML, CF-NetCDF and other documents, we  
> believe that maintaining a strong collaborative relationship with  
> the existing GeoTIFF community is critical.
>
> As part of this process, the OGC and OGC Members would be  
> responsible for reformatting the document into the proper template,  
> marshalling volunteer resources to move the document through the OGC  
> process, and to insure proper communication and engagement with the  
> current GeoTIFF community.
>
> Your thoughts regarding this proposal are appreciated!
>

My concerns with the approach the following:

- OGC subsuming the current GeoTIFF specification and becoming its  
ongoing authority effectively destroys any grass roots community that  
has sprung up around geotiff because of OGC's membership  
requirements.   Casual or short-term-to-complete-this-job interest in  
geotiff is effectively shut out from participating, though you could  
argue there isn't much of this anyway.
- OGC hasn't demonstrated that it can pull community-developed  
specifications into its world and have the community that birthed them  
survive the process.  Does OGC's sausage taste that much better than  
sausage made outside the OGC?
- GeoTIFF already has a widely used and effective reference  
implementation -- libgeotiff.  That's more authority than a document  
stamped with an organization's letterhead can ever hope to be.

What benefits would this development be to the GeoTIFF community other  
than forced acceptance of OGC-style axis order discipline? ;)  Is the  
main benefit is to be the ability to make changes to the specification  
that implementers will have to implement to be compliant? Why try to  
evolve a specification that has been widely used and unchanged for  
nearly 10 years?