Remember the OGC REST API standard blowup earlier this year? Yea, great times. It reinforced the notion that the OGC is run by those who donate the most to the organization. Smartly it was withdrawn and we can all go about our business without some crazy new standard being rushed through. Cameron Shorter highlighted a new initiative at the OGC to try and address these issues brought up by the REST debacle.
You may remember the contentious proposal for the GeoServices REST API to become an OGC standard? After strong community concerns, largely focused on duplication of existing standards, the motion to approve the proposed standard was withdrawn. The fact that the proposal progressed as far as it did, to the point where it was almost ratified as a standard before being blocked, was a primary driver leading the OGC to initiate an “Ideas for OGC” (Ideas4OGC) review, aimed at re-baselining OGC priorities and processes.
The OGC has the Ideas4OGC initial recommendations on their wiki page:
Formally kicked off on June 20th, 2013, the Ideas for OGC (Ideas4OGC) process has collected a broad set of comments, recommendations and constructive criticism from across the membership, the public and OGC staff.
Yea they heard us. Head over to that wiki page and read up and input your comments. Sounds like they are totally rethinking how they operate on this kind of stuff. Hopefully this means that any new standards proposed will have to go through a process that is open and meaningful, rather than a rush job so one company can prove their software is OGC compliant. This gets a thumbs up from me!
