Geodata Committee Meeting 20060322

= Public Geospatial Data Committee Meeting 2006-Mar-22 =

Meeting Info
Chair: Jo Walsh Minutes: Schuyler Erle IRC: #osgeo channel on irc.freenode.org Date: 2006-Mar-22 (at least in the Americas and Europe) Time: Wednesday March 22, 15:00 UTC

Agenda Items

 * Introductions
 * Who are in the Committee?
 * Discuss focus of group - accessing data versus enabling tools for creating data or something in between?
 * How to take stock of what is available? Are we aiming to have a repository of data or pointers to external data?
 * Outreach - if people are working on repository efforts already, how can we connect with them?
 * Geodata licensing is a pressing issue. The Public Geodata license has invoked calls for an LPGL model without a ShareAlike constraint. Can we start a working group on this?


 * Schedule next committee meeting
 * Please Add Agenda Items

Minutes

 * Attendance: Jo Walsh, Frank Warmerdam, David Bitner, Jeff McKenna, Alan Doyle, Schuyler Erle, Markus Neteler, Perry Nacionales, Florian Kindl, Daniel Brookshier

Group Focus

 * Accessing data? enabling tools for creating data? or something in between? -- consensus is we want both a portal for accessing existing geodata *and* tools for creating new data.


 * Portal for accessing existing data
 * Sources of data
 * Packaged data sets (e.g. TIGER/Line, VMap0, ...)
 * Web services (OGC-compliant services, OPeNDAP)
 * Allan: "there have been lots of attempts... at first, all you need is pointers to the data & services... but to gain critical mass, you have to fill the catalog with good stuff..."
 * Jo proposes an Action Item to compile a list of existing portals
 * http://www.refractions.net/white_papers/ogcsurvey/
 * http://gcmd.nasa.gov/index.html
 * http://www.geotorrent.org/
 * http://metrogis.org/
 * http://nationalatlas.gov/
 * Canadian CGDI
 * Tools for creating and editing data
 * Agreed to be within the group's focus
 * Deferring making plans to act on this for now
 * Deferring making plans to act on this for now

Taking Stock of Existing Data

 * Catalog existing data? and/or host a repository? no consensus yet.
 * Process data into more usable formats?
 * TIGER/Line, VMap0, GSHHS
 * Packaging data also means fixing metadata
 * Provide a forum/| marketplace for data wanted / data offered?
 * Daniel Brookshier notes that OSGeo.org can host some data
 * Proposed we break this into two work groups
 * Catalog / Discovery Portal (+ Outreach)
 * Packaging / Quality Control / Metadata Augmentation / Documentation (focus on education, e.g. GRASS Spearfish)
 * Outreach
 * Geodata Committee's efforts should coordinate closely with Education Committee
 * External outreach can proceed informally for now (as the committee gets bootstrapped)

Geodata Licensing

 * Lots of discussion around OpenStreetMap and the ShareAlike provision of its Creative Commons license, and around creating an LGPL-like license specifically for geodata
 * The core issue is what constitutes a "derived work" from geodata
 * OSGeo can help add clarity to the discussion
 * Public Geodata License... can we envision/propose an LPGL?
 * http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/geo-discuss/2006-March/000132.html contains an overview of existing discussion
 * Proposed we start a working group to research and enumerate geodata licensing possibilities
 * Goal state is to list a set of licenses that OSGeo software packages can offer as configuration defaults for people publishing their own data

New Working Groups

 * 1) Data Discovery / Access
 * 2) Packaging / Reuse / QA / Maintenance
 * 3) Licensing

Next Meeting
Next meeting in exactly one week, Wed 29th March 2006, 1500 UTC on irc.freenode.net #osgeo.