Seven of Nine : Resistence is Futile - Space

1st INSPIRE Open Source Mash-Up

nospam@example.com (Seven of Nine) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:02:00 +0000

In case you have not heard about it yet: There will be an Open Source Mash-Up workshop at the INSPIRE conference in Kraków, Poland under the motto "biodiversity". All and everybody is invited to take part, be it at the conference or remotely.

What is going to happen?
Whatever you can make happen...

How did it come into being? Paul Smits from the JRC approached Andrea Giacomelli and me at the last OGC TC meeting in Frascati, Italy and asked whether we would be interested in helping to organize an Open Source Mash-Up at the upcoming INSPIRE conference in Krakow. We both confirmed that this is an excellent idea and that we would be delighted to help organize it. Andrea suggested that a motto would help to get people interested and came up with "Biodiversity". He started to put together the description of the event and launched a call for participation. Old bad me did not do anything much except talk to people about it wherever I met them because I have business (but that is another story).

Who is organizing this? Currently "we" are the JRC and OSGeo and we try to address a broad group of stakeholders ranging from the lone techie developer through environmental experts with a spatial problem on their hands right up to the business executive of the European NMCAs (National Mapping and Cadastre Agencies), EEA (European Environmental Agency) and whoever else thinks that they can contribute or take away something. It will be interesting to understand what the the motivations of the participants are but that angle of a stakeholder analysis will have to wait until after the event. Lets have a look at the initiating parties.

What is the JRC? It is the "Joint Research Center" and no, they do not research the effects of THC on scientist's brains but they "enable" INSPIRE. They have been tasked by the commission to provide an infrastructure and organizational framework enabling experts, users and managers to design the European (environmental) SDI. Mind me: INSPIRE is not the JRC! INSPIRE is aprocess. Regardless of what this means in detail it has become obvious that the few INSPIRE folks in JRC are hopelessly over tasked. Organizing the design of Europe's spatial data is a Titan's job. No matter how good and industrious the INSPIRE crew is, they are humans, not Titans. Europe's spatial data as a whole is way to large, heterogeneous and non-ingeniously organized to get anywhere fast. It has grown literally over hundreds of years and with IT becoming commonplace a legacy of technological silos emerged. These we have to unite.

I guess that most of those who end up reading this Blog are pretty aware of what OSGeo is. Beyond the task of providing a coding infrastructure, QAing project governance and organizing the FOSS4G conferences OSGeo also supports free and open access to geospatial data. This is where OSGeo should and can hook into INSPIRE. OSGeo's spatial IT know-how can tie into INSPIRE in many different ways. Jo Walsh registered OSGeo as an SDIC (Spatial Data Interest Community) in the INSPIRE process, so "we" have a voice there. But afaik no one is talking (except for the odd complaint on Twitter or standards ML that INSPIRE will never work or is all wrong). This may be one of the core issues with INSPIRE. It is broadly recognized as a legal framework, but it is not seen as a process that is open for participation. It has started as an idea at the end of the last millennium and has grown in many different ways. One is the regular standards based, organized, legally binding sometimes sore process of defining specifications and guidelines. Some of this process and their results have been criticized heavily by "us" (that is the agile, sleek, geek "us"). Some LMOs (the Legally Mandated Organizations in INSPIRE, for example the NMCAs) have bent and obstructed INSPIRE until they succeeded in removing some of the explicit openness that was core to INSPIRE since its inception. That is when the GeoRM layer invaded the architecture diagrams, prominently "protecting" all within. We might get a taste of this during the Mash-Up workshop when we try to access some of the data and map services that are made available through the INSPIRE framework. Even if the only outcome of our Open Source Mash-Up event is that the RM crap prevented anything from getting done, it would still be a good result because it gives us a chance to show whats wrong and not only talk about it.

Remember: INSPIRE is neither a physical thing nor a person nor a single organization. It is but an idea and ideas are worth nothing until they are realized. If policy, GeoRM, crappy service quality or technological excesses prevent INSPIRE from taking off then we will have to remove or steer around GeoRM, improve the service quality and propose alternative technology. I say "we" because I believe that it will involve all parties including NMCAs, JRC, OSGeo, OGC (just to name a few) but also the "broad public".

Yes, INSPIRE also foresees interaction with the "broad public". What is the broad public? Some understand it as a Mass Market as it is addressed by the GoogleBingYahoos of this world. Others believe in more collaborative and inclusive governing by the people themselves and call the broad public "European citizens". Think e-Government not as online forms but as collaborating on governing. There are a few hundred million people around and I guess there should be one or two who are also spatially aware and potentially even technologically savvy enough to get something done. But how to identify and then interact with them?

In the ideal case developers and users will meet in a workshop room and collaborate on Mash-Ups. What could that be? I am pretty sure that a few OpenLayers based applications will pop up and maybe a prototype for the biodiversity folks. We might learn that OpenLayers and GDAL/OGR will need to learn GML 3.2.1 just as deegree has. Maybe we just get a better understanding of what INSPIRE is and what it is not.

So lets actually mess up INSPIRE a bit. Interested? Then go register at the INSPIRE Forum and find out what is already going on. Support in action.

If you have questions, post them here, the OSGeo Discuss mailing list, the INSPIRE forum or hassle me directly. Unfortunately I wont be at the conference myself (because they rejected my submission with the title "How INSPIRE failed on metadata"... . But Paul will be there and Andrea and several other well-known binaries – I mean: folks. And I promise that it will be a productive event - no matter what comes out of it. It will surely be more than what we have achieved so far.

Have fun.

Udpate

Read about the first results of the workshop / mash-up in the INSPIRE forum.

The European Union, Open Source and INSPIRE

nospam@example.com (Seven of Nine) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:41:44 +0000

Disclaimer: This is no more than a brain dump.

There are some obvious issues with Open Source in the EU and INSPIRE that have been troubling me for some while. For some reason no one inside the commission who I have talked to seems to get this which makes me wonder whether it is me who got it all wrong. So bear with me for a moment and feel free to share your thoughts.

As I understand the INSPIRE process, it should be influenced by three distinct parties: The public administration, private companies with a business interest and the public at large. From all that I can tell this latter group includes grass-roots Open Source projects and those sustained by small businesses. I am not talking about the big funded (and sometimes somewhat bloated) projects, those are another story.

The active participation in the INSPIRE process involves quite a bit of monetary and temporal investment. In most cases this investment will only be done only by two of the three parties. One is the public administration, they are obliged to take part as best as they can and it should be in their best interest. But – we are talking hierarchy and top down processes in legal frameworks – not bottom up processes that would actually work. The second active party are companies with a sizable enough budget to fund up-front investment. They only move if they can expect a return on their investment. This is perfectly in order in our current economic system. But it also means that real input to the INSPIRE process is restricted to two of the three parties. Those who have a motivation to make a profit and the public administration.

Larger profit driven companies are known to miss the point by not listening to their users or going astray with queer technology and building vendor-lock-in. Not much innovation to expect here. The public administration, government institutions are routinely understaffed and – no offense taken – typically undereducated. This is the result of years of privatizing institutions, a process we all support when we vote for governments (but that is another story).

The third group - the public at large - is only theoretically considered but cannot get involved in any noticeable way due to restrictions in time and money. In my typically skewed perspective this is also where innovative Open Source could but does not come into play.

This flaw is a lot more blatantly visible in all EU funded projects - which again makes me wonder why it is not more prominently recognized or discussed. Let me explain, it is a really simple logic: Work packages in EU funded projects typically require private investment of 50%. The return on this investment is supposed to come from selling "something". In the software domain common understanding still seems to generate revenue by charging usage fees for proprietary licenses. This obviously does not work for Open Source because once the work is done, there is no more incentive to pay for it.

Funny enough lately Open Source has become a buzz word in EU grant applications. But no more than that. The result of EU funded projects consequently are so many software hacks in a wild state of incompleteness and lack of real world usage. Again – no offense meant – it is the system that makes us do it this way. The main reason why most "Open Source" projects fail is that they spell "Open Source" in quotes. They fail to follow the Open-Source-way-of-doing-things right from the start (read up on http://producingoss.org to get the gist). Instead in many cases it feels more like a random license has been stuck on top of the project at the last moment before submitting the final report. This is not just a waste of resources but it also damages the reputation of those who implement quality software under an Open Source license.

As already stated at the outset this is nothing but a brain dump and not meant to put anyone off. My guess is that most of these issues simply result from a deep misunderstanding and thorough ignorance as to what makes Open Source projects function successfully. But who on earth will pay someone like me to educate folks before submitting a grant application or talk to the commission in a way "it" understands? Some already do, and there is OSOR for a start, but it is still a long ways to go. Meanwhile INSPIRE goes – well, where exactly? I'll go ask some Borg when I am back in orbit, they should know, they know how to communicate.

Have fun.

More techno @ FOSSGIS

nospam@example.com (Seven of Nine) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:18:47 +0000

When Christoph Baudson and me prepared the presentation Typification of Web GIS Clients (and English language version will follow) we wondered how many developers would be at FOSSGIS. And we came up with not even an handful and we know most if not all of them by name. While this is great we would really like to make FOSSGIS more attractive to potential new developers. This is why the opening lightning talks were carefully chosen to get more techies interested. They ranged from "How to contribute to Open Source software projects" by Andreas Hocevar, through "Browser-based Gaming with OGC services" by Thorsten Bockmühl, up (or down) to "NoSql" by Volker Mische.

The keynote was awarded to Marc Jansen who talked about "ECMAScript, HTML5 and the Cloud" and allowed us a glimpse into the future Web which really looks quite bright.

This year all of this had a bit of an aspect of casting pearls before swines but maybe word of mouth will help to get a more tech focus next year.

Have fun.

Metaspatial

nospam@example.com (Seven of Nine) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:07:00 +0000

Let me introduce my new brand Metaspatial. The name Metaspatial combines "meta" which is derived from Greek: μετά and means "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent", or "self". It is a prefix used to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. Now that I come to think of it, the name of my last project might be Postspatial...

The new Metaspatial logo.

Whatever, it feels great to head on. A big thanks goes to all my colleagues at the WhereGroup who have always supported me generously in my quest for spatial enlightenment and endured all the standards and free software model escapades that got us where we are now. It was a great time and there is a saying that that is the time when one has to leave.

I will spend my newly found free time to... but wait. Didn't I say that I have no time? And how can one "spend time" anyway. Maybe we are more like granted time. Reformulating: My newly granted time will go into the physics of space time and mind.

So what has changed for me? Nothing much. And for you? Nothing much either. I am still open for software and architecture consulting, prototyping, agile development and spatial (meta) data - with one little catch: You need to get me interested.

Have fun.

Update

As of June 2010 the logo of Metaspatial has changed (see below for the old one). I finally found time to talk to my designer and for once I listened to her. So here we go with a new logo. How do you like it? If you are interessted in the background, feel free to read the About pages on Metaspatial.

If I would really want to know then I should probably make a new blog entry and not eidt an old one that no one will ever look at again. Now I wonder: Should I remove or change the old blog or leave as is. Seems that everybody handles that differently. Some say a blog has to stay unedited, others edit freely, even weeks and months later. Dunno. What do you think? (Just ropened commenting for a while.)

Metaspatial Logo

On Sharing

nospam@example.com (Seven of Nine) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:07:00 +0000

Management Summary
In digital space sharing means multiplying whereas in physical space it means dividing. In the digital realm the meaning of the word "share" is the opposite of the meaning in our material world.

Sharing Source Code
The semantics of the term "Share" relates to "splitting things into smaller pieces". If you share a cake you will only get one half of it. If you share more, you may only get one quarter, eighth, sixteenth, the 32nd or the 64th bit of IT. We know that sequence. It is our code. But what is code? If anything, IT is definitely not a piece of cake. IT is something else. IT is digital and that changes the mathematics of sharing. Sharing code makes it grow bigger. Therefore it is plain stupid to try to "protect" code from being shared. It is like "protecting" a plant from light, water, and soil.

You do not have to believe this, find out all by yourself.

Experimental Proof

Run the following two experiments in parallel to prove that in our digital world sharing means multiplying. The core processes should be run for one month and can then be verified on an annual basis.

Set-up 1:

- Lock yourself up in a closet

- No Internet

- No email

- No talking to others

Then, write an exceptionally good piece of software!

- Commit code every day

Verification:

- Check on the code after one month. Did it evolve into a project?

- Check on the code after one year. Does it still compile?

- Check on the project after ten years. Do you still understand any of the gibberish that you produced ten years ago?

Set-up 2:

- Connect to the Web

- Publish a short blurb on a dedicated web site describing what you want to do

- Write a Blog

- Tweet both

Then, write an exceptionally good piece of software!

- Commit code every day

Verification:

- Check on the code after one month. Did it evolve into a project?

- Check on the code after one year. Has your exceptional code revolutionized the way people solve problems?

- Check on the project after ten years. Have they awarded you a prize of honor?

Proprietary

The word "property" translated into German means "Besitz". Etymologically and semantically the verb "sitzen" translated back into English means "sitting" (on something). For the sake of my argument "proprietary software" can thus be interpreted perfectly well as "sitting on IT". More precisely, sitting on IT in a way that will prevent others from using IT. Taking into account that sharing in digital world means multiplying this is plain stupid.

- The process of copying is lossless.

- Each copy of a software is always a perfect copy.

- IT is duplication and multiplication.

In the material world multiplying by sharing is nothing short of a miracle (like Jesus sharing five loafs of bread and two fish with 5000 followers beside the Sea of Galilee). Even in Star Trek universe it needs lots of energy to replicate objects. IT is different. IT has more similarities with reading a book. Try out this one: Read a book and then give it to a friend. Observe your memory. Can you feel how the words disappear from your mind as your friend reads the book? What do you lose? Nothing. Instead you might be able to talk about that great book with your friend. It's all your choice.

Welcome to Weirdo's World

IT is weird in a physical environment where it is undeniably important to have things. IT is weird to material beings as .us. Open Source describes a set of guidelines that only makes sense in this weird world. It is therefore no wonder that we fail to understand that we can only maximize success by opening up our code as broadly as possible. IT takes time to understand. The Wikipedia article on Sharing has been compiled by digital junkies and misses the point that sharing usually means "to give away something". Thanks to Gecko Wikipedia knows a bit about Rivalry.

If you look closely it is happening right now. We are learning how to apply sharing. Even if it does not apply to hardware – and it never will because it simply cannot – it does apply to it's design. And IT is all about design these days, ain't IT?

There is a commons that is not tragic because it never runs out.