Development of OS Satellite Image Processing/Mapping 36
Ken Melero writes "ImageLinks, in collaboration with Federal Agencies and Florida Tech is developing Open Source software for satellite image processing and mapping. The Open Source Software Image Map (OSSIM) experiment will be hosted on RemoteSensing.org and will demonstrate the application of open source software development techniques in meeting government requirements. See the press release for more information. " Looks cool - GPL as the license.
hmm (Score:1)
Wow, it must be IR day on Slashdot. (Score:3)
www.spaceimaging.com [spaceimaging.com] (the first ones to sell commercial high-res imagery, very cool site with sat photo dowonloads)
A report by the Carnegie Endownment For Internatinal Peace
An abstract is posted online with the full report available for download.on the effects of commercial High-res.
Secrets for Sale [ceip.org]
tcd004 Here's my Microsoft Parody [lostbrain.com], where's yours.
Hope for better satelite data format documentation (Score:3)
From experience, it will more likely result in filters of resolutions with a tremendous range, both in granularity and depth, being interpolated and patched together. I'm not sure I believe that OS will get around the traditional bailing wire and duct tape aproach of engineers in the field...
Corporate Adaptation (Score:3)
That said, I have to express a mixture of excitement and concern over what the success of this project could mean. On the one hand, it could mean that corporate culture will begin (slowly) to adapt to the Open Source model. On the other, it could mean that corporations will glean the hard work of Open Source developers and cash in, doing very little actual work themselves.
In the first case, I am happy on two counts: changing corporate culture is difficult, and if the Open Source Movement succeeds, it will be a big "feather" in our collective hat; and, corporate adaptation means that more companies are likely to open hardware specs for Linux support, and software specs for cross-platform ports.
In the second case, I have mixed feelings: having a corporate infrastructure to market and distribute Open Source works has the makings of a rather sound business model -- however, the less ethical companies out there (which, IMHO are a vast majority) may abuse the model so thoroughly that Open Source developers are alienated.
However, I cannot decide whether Open Source would be hurt, or if developers would just move thier resources to the more ethical companies. The concern is that even if the latter, the "evil" orgs can still get the work -- possibly with even less effort.
Anyone see a way around that mess?
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*sigh* (Score:1)
-motardo
Re:Corporate Adaptation (Score:2)
Nice Try (Score:1)
It is a nice project and it does have application in the corporate world. Yes, I agree, it is a good. But . . .
what the open source world needs to push it over the "edge" is a project that everyone would want to have, a killer app if you would.
if, say, the open source world got together and built an openDoc office suite, then that would be worth talking about . . . 'til then, well, we'll see.
Re:hmm (Score:1)
http://www.tmcsys.com/ssi/ssifaq.html [tmcsys.com] I am not sure how evolved this is yet.
Government Funding... (Score:2)
...was impossible to trace by following the links. Assuming that the US government is involved, it is wrong.
Think about it. Tax dollars come from the people and from corporations. That includes MS employees and other software companies. They are using tax dollars to fund software written under a license that effectively tends to nationalize an industry, without any consent from the people.
This is just symptomatic of the whole leftist Clinton/Gore/Judge Jackson mentality that pervades this administration.
Once again, I have no problem if private organizations want to collectivize themselves, but when my government gets involved, warning bells start to go off. Karma to burn lately, so mod all you want.
As usual, partially old news. (Score:3)
ITAR? (Score:1)
Re:Government Funding... (Score:1)
Assuming you are talking about OSS; If tax dollars are involved how would a propriatary liscense be better? or are you saying it should be public domain? If tax money is involved, all the taxpayers should get equal access.
Seriously, this makes no sense. It seems to be an excuse for a diatribe against the current administration. Judge Jackson, a registered Republican and Reagan apointee, is a leftist!?... yea, and I'm a Chinese jet pilot. Hell, calling Clinton and Gore leftists is a stretch... but I guess when you contrast them with the far right screwheads they could be seen as such.
Re:As usual, partially old news. (Score:1)
Re:Government Funding... (Score:1)
If it's government funded, it should be public domain. The government shouldn't be developing proprietary software either.
Emphasis is on the word developing
GRASS (Score:2)
Damn.. (Score:1)
R.I.P.
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
Re:Nice Try (Score:2)
if, say, the open source world got together and built an openDoc office suite, then that would be worth talking about
I don't guess you've heard of KOffice? Check out www.kde.org and bring your C++ skills. Hackers are needed. If you don't want to hack on it, then use it. Try it out and submit bug reports.
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
I wonder what percentage of the sky would be darkened if anyone were allowed (and could afford) to put things into orbit...
Re:Corporate Adaptation (Score:1)
This is a very interesting use of the Open Source community.
IMO I think exploitation may be a more accurate term.
. On the one hand, it could mean that corporate culture will begin (slowly) to adapt to the Open Source model.
To a small degree possibly, if nothing else the open source methodology is getting some press.
On the other, it could mean that corporations will glean the hard work of Open Source developers and cash in, doing very little actual work themselves.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Correct sir!. This is exactly what it looks like to me, in this instance anyway. This smells of exploitation pure and simple. It's too bad really because the end product seems pretty cool and could have some real application for both federal and corporate use. It's a real setback to see this happen the way it has as outlined in the article. The open source community seems to be winning the battle of understanding that open does not mean free. This article illustrates how quickly that message gets changed to suit any purpose the spin artists need.
Hopefully this will not become a trend, maybe with bigger companies like IBM etc. that have their own spinmiesters and who apparently do "get it" will balance the scales to allow the unknowing phb's and corporations to make up their own minds and not use cases like this as precident for how to get software and environments built, ported, expanded, whatever, for a hugely reduced cost and at a massive development savings, all by only exploiting the open source development community.
Re:hmm (Score:1)
already open source (Score:1)
Re:*sigh* (Score:1)
-motardo
Re:Corporate Adaptation (Score:3)
I'm not terribly concerned that anyone will make Open software less open (though the GPL has yet to be thoroughly tested in court), or that companies will make money selling support for free products like Linux distros do.
My concern is that companies will start saying "hey, we have this idea, lets give it to the Open Source community, and they'll write it for us." Then they simply obfuscate the open source nature of the product and pack it up. Now, to geeks and programmers who keep tabs and *shock* read licenses, this probably would have little effect. But the mass populace won't know the difference. That's a Bad Thing because it really doesn't further the goals of Open Source -- the availability of Free Software to whomever wants it.
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Re:Government Funding... (Score:2)
You have a problem with the government spending tax dollars on GPL'ed software? Tax dollars should be spent to get the most bang for the buck, and to do the best thing for the American people. The GPL seems like a great way to do that. Would you rather they spent the money on some proprietary software? Am I being trolled, here?
This way, every person or corporation who pays taxes (or not) gets the source code! That's obviously a whole lot better than paying taxes and not getting the source code. Or worse, paying the taxes, having the development go over budget and over schedule, and not even getting usable software at all (a common government software spending pattern!)
And what do you mean the GPL "effectively tends to nationalize an industry". You have some evidence for that?
I mean, the Linux kernel, and Apache, and the GIMP, and SAMBA, and OpenSSH, and Gnome are written by developers all over the world. By "nationalize", you must mean something different from the natural meaning of the word.
Can you explain what you meant, or are you just an anti-GPL troll?
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Remote sensing - where it's at now. (Score:1)
The major types are satellite data ('photographic' and multiband), aerial ( photographic / geophysical ) and seismic ( marine / land ), with a plethora of 'spot' readings of various types.
The stages of data use are:
1) Aquisition - downlink from sat, fly plane & aquire, send ship out & measure, etc.
2) Georeference - correct perspective distortion / grid raw data , etc.
3) Delivery - Fat data over thin wire problem.
4) Process / Enhance / Interact with / Use.
In the world outside of mineral exploration / military use, the big news has been the Ikonos sat. & the explosion of much cheaper & higher resolution air photo mosaic's.
( One of the local councils has a 25cm air mosaic several Gigs in size & amoungst other uses, roofing tilers are grabbing the data to target people with tiles missing off their roofs )
One of the current hot topics is how to deliver terrabytes of raster/vector data over inet connections for people to use at home or in the office.
My current URL ( http://www.earthetc.com/ )( nope - I don't work for them, although friends do ) has a pretty impressive demo of zomming and panning over the net.
The OS community is looking at catching up with about thirty years of commercial / military software development stemming from USGS code, GRASS, GMT etc. Various components such as orthorectification have have dedicated commercial packages ( Halava , ermapper ) worth several thousand dollars.
An interesting tack for the OS movement to tack would be to leapfrog the aquisition & georeferencing stages, assume the existence of large georeferenced mosaiced data sets, and focus on the issues of delivery and end user tools, ( smart street directories, hand held's with 200Gb drives for use in co-ordinating emergency response teams etc.( requires integration with 'live' GPS data)).
It's a pretty interesting field
Re:1 inch, 1 cm, 1 mm resolution targets in the ne (Score:1)
Pat
(FIT Student)
Re:1 inch, 1 cm, 1 mm resolution targets in the ne (Score:2)
Re:Government Funding... (Score:2)
//rdj
Re:Nice Try (Score:1)
IBM first introduced this amazing product into OS/2 with version 2.2. At that point they made openDoc fully integrated into the Presentation Manager. This meant that for apps that supported it, you could just drag the appropriate part of the document from one app to another. Formating was largely automatic. Very nice and very killer.
Unfortunately, IBM has become a slave to MicroSlob and well, you can see for yourself where OS/2 is.
KOffice is probably going to be a "nice" office collection, but it will be just another office app. Nothing special, unless . . .
BTW: I don't do C++, I do objective C.
Re:Nice Try (Score:2)
BTW, KParts are intended to work like OpenDoc parts. May even be compatible, I'd have to check the docs again.
Actually, all of KDE is heading that way with embeddable KParts. You really need to check it out.
Re:As usual, partially old news. (Score:2)
Another good place in addition to remotesensing.org [remotesensing.org] to keep an eye on Libre RS/GIS software development and data is freegis.org [freegis.org].
Re:What about GRASS? (Score:1)
Minor correction: version 5 of GRASS [lakeheadu.ca] was released under the GPL last November (1999). GRASS v0 - 4.x is public domain (still under minor development, mostly bug fixing).
Re:As usual, partially old news. (Score:2)
My title/comment was inspired by grumpiness brought on by yet another "wow look what I discovered, isn't it shiny and new and gosh aren't we important" thing from /. posters. It's hard for them to remember sometimes that 90% of geek history occurred before they discovered the Web ... ;)
cheers
Re:Nice Try (Score:1)