Difference between revisions of "LIDAR Format Letter"

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=Open Letter for the need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
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== Cover Letter from the OSGeo Board of Directors ==
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The Board of the [http://osgeo.org Open Source Geospatial Foundation] (OSGeo) is presenting this letter to the geospatial community at large. The letter highlights concerns about the need for standards in LiDAR data formats, from many people within the OSGeo community. Although specific organizations are named in the letter, the OSGeo Board of Directors would like to focus on the general importance of standards in the industry, and learn from this example so we can make geospatial information easily accessible to all users.  As always, if there is anything that the OSGeo Board can do to help, then please let us know.
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Signed:
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* Jeff McKenna (OSGeo President), Michael Smith (OSGeo Treasurer), Jáchym Čepický (OSGeo Secretary), Massimiliano Cannata, Vasile Craciunescu, Bart van den Eijnden, Gérald Fenoy, Anne Ghisla, Jorge Sanz
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=Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
 
April 2015.
 
April 2015.
  
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We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimised LAS" proprietary format. This is of concern since the fragmentation of the LAS format will lead to reduced interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.
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We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" '''''proprietary format.''''' This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.
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We request that:
 
We request that:
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# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that sponsors of OGC help to prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
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# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
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# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI join the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimised LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdle in use of "Optimised LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimised LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimised LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as LibLAS or LASzip.
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# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI joins with the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASlib.
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# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over closed when selecting software and services.
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# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
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# The owners of LAS open format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], publicly request ESRI avoid incorporating the use of the word "LAS" in describing a proprietary format.
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# The custodians of the open LAS format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.
  
 
=Signed=
 
=Signed=
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# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
 
# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
 
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
 
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
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# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft], Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live], Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
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# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft]. Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live]. Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
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# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; researcher in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
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# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; Professor in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
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# Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/phogan Patrick Hogan], [http://goworldwind.org/ NASA World Wind] Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
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# Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
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# [http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli Maria Antonia Brovelli], Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it/en/university/ Politecnico di Milano]. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy and to Open Principles in Research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ronfortunato Ron Fortunato], President of [http://www.trilliumlearning.com/AmericaBridge/ Trillium Learning] LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
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# [http://www.geodatawiz.com/armin-schmidt Armin Schmidt], Chief Developer at [http://www.GeodataWIZ.com GeodataWIZ Ltd] and Chairman of [http://www.archprospection.org ISAP], committed to better science through Open Data.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti Giuseppe Conti], CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
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# [http://pt.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-rocha/1b/560/499 Jorge Gustavo Rocha], Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through [http://www.gistam.org/EventChairs.aspx?y=2016 Open Data].
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# [http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/ Jim Miller], University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brandt-melick/22/869/261 Brandt Melick], Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA. The need to promote open solutions is paramount.
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# Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
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# Jorg M. Hacker, Professor, Director/Chief Scientist of [http://www.airborneresearchaustralia.com Airborne Research Australia], Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
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# Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of [http://www.ign.fr Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière], France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/adryane-gorayeb/74/517/96a Adryane Gorayeb], [http://www.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará Brazil], Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/yuryryabov Yury Ryabov], PhD, Senior researcher at [http://www.istc.ru/istc/db/inst.nsf/wsu/i0001823 Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety], [http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/CentralEasternEurope/13383.aspx Russian Academy of Sciences], Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teresa-lamelas-gracia/40/4a7/20b María Teresa Lamelas], [http://cud.unizar.es/ Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza], [http://geoforest.unizar.es/es/index.php GeoForest-IUCA]. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidherries David Herries], [http://www.interpine.co.nz/SitePages/Home.aspx Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation]. Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation.  This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
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# [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez Ortega]], [http://www.mazemap.no Mazemap]. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
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# [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
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# [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer]], [http://www.geomaticblog.net Geomaticblog]. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-donert/3/160/571 Professor Karl Donert], President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
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# Drew Fenton, Boulder Creek, CA [http://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods/coast-redwoods/ Countdown to the Last Coast Redwood]. Please protect Open Standards for geospatial data!
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# [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
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# [http://vmx.cx Volker Mische], OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/clquintanilla Carlos López Quintanilla], [http://www.psig.es PSIG]  [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] GIS consultant, Spain
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# [[User:woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], [http://imaptools.com iMaptools], OSGeo Charter member.
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# [[User:Lucadelu|Luca Delucchi]], [http://gis.cri.fmach.it Fondazione Edmund Mach], OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
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# Antoine Cottin, CTO of [http://www.carbomap.com Carbomap Ltd.] and creator of [http://github.com/carbomap/Fleurdelas Fleurdelas], Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
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# [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], [http://strk.keybit.net/services.html NetLab], Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
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# [http://www.itopen.it Alessandro Pasotti], [http://www.itopen.it ItOpen], GIS Free Software Developer.
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# [http://www.roccatello.com Eduard Roccatello], [http://www.3dgis.it 3DGIS], 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
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# [[User:moovida|Andrea Antonello]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
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# [http://www.associazionegfoss.it Stefano Campus], President of [http://www.associazionegfoss.it GFOSS.it] Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Madi Margherita Di Leo], OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Sacosta Sergio Acosta y Lara], OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin], CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
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# [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy
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# [http://www.geog.illinois.edu/people/jgrn Jonathan Greenberg], Assistant Professor, [http://publish.illinois.edu/jgrn/ GEARS Laboratory], Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bob-basques/14/8B2/537 Bob Basques], Saint Paul, Mn., Technical Director for SharedGeo.
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maning Maning Sambale], OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pcav Paolo Cavallini], QGIS PSC
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dr Phillip Davis], Member OSGeo Geo For All education advisory board, Director @ GeoAcademy
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon Nicolas Bozon], Researcher and software developer, OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslanrainis Ruslan Rainis], Professor, Director, [http://www.research.usm.my/default.asp?tag=36 Centre for Research Initiatives in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences](CRI-LASS). Open GeoInformation for a Sustainable Tomorrow and the Bottom Billions.
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# [[User:Silli|Silvia Franceschi]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Environmental Engineer Open Source GIS power user, HydroloGIS co-founder.
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# Oscar Martinez Rubi [http://esciencecenter.nl Netherlands eScience Center] eScience engineer.
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# Werner Macho, QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
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# Giuseppe Patti, Geologist and Freelance Geospatial Advisor, GFOSS supporter.
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Drappo Daniel Rappo], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
 +
# [[User:nachouve|Juan Ignacio Varela]], Freelance Geospatial Advisor and OSGeo Local Chapter Member.
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# [[User:dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]], President at [http://mapgears.com Mapgears], OSGeo Charter member.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/raulnanclares Raul Nanclares], RS&GIS Specialist
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# [http://www.ing.unitn.it/dica/hp/index_eng.php?user=rigon Riccardo Rigon], Professor at University of Trento (Italy)
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# [[User:Siki| Zoltan Siki]] Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), OSGeo Charter member.
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# [http://lefsky.org Michael Lefsky], Professor of Remote Sensing Science, Colorado State University and Director, Center for Ecological Applications of Lidar.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lucas-c-villa-real/7/a0b/b06 Lucas Villa Real], Research software engineer at IBM Research - Brazil.
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# [http://terraremote.com Loren Dawe], GIS Manager at Terra Remote Sensing Inc. Lidar Supplier and Open Standards Advocate
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Warmerda Frank Warmerdam], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
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# [http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/jens-ingensand/0/836/6b0 Jens Ingensand], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, [http://www.heig-vd.ch/international School of Business and Engineering Vaud].
 +
# [http://nsidc.org/research/bios/khalsa.html Siri Jodha Khalsa], Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, [http://cires.colorado.edu/ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences], University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
 +
# [http://gis.uster.ch/ Andreas Neumann], GIS manager, City of Uster, Kanton Zurich, Switzerland
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# [http://www.iwmi.org/ Yann Chemin], Researcher - Remote Sensing, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennebracine Etienne B. Racine], Geomatics and remote sensing project manager, WSP, Canada
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alejandro-hinojosa/7/33b/342 Alejandro Hinojosa], [http://cicese.mx CICESE Research Center], Earth Sciences Division, GIS & Remote Sensing Lab, Ensenada, Mexico
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:epifanio Massimo Di Stefano], OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://clas.ucdenver.edu/directory/faculty-staff/Rafael-Moreno Rafael Moreno], University of Colorado Denver, [http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Departments/ges/Pages/Geography.aspx Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences]. Openness is fundamental to progress.
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# Peter Drexel, GIS manager, [http://www.vorarlberg.at/vorarlberg/bauen_wohnen/bauen/vermessung_geoinformation/start.htm State of Vorarlberg (State Survey Office)], Austria
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marco-minghini/a8/3b6/198 Marco Minghini], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano]. Committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Research.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/candan-eyl%C3%BCl-kilsedar/65/380/976 Candan Eylül Kilsedar], WebGIS Developer, Research Fellow at [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:AlastairMcKinstry Alastair McKinstry], Debian Linux meteorology/GIS developer, Ireland
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# [http://people.unibo.it/it/elena.mezzini2 Elena Mezzini], Remote-sensing in forest ecology, Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=43566064 Mihai A. Tanase], Honorary fellow, Dept. of Forest and Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
 +
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-murray/10/742/3a2 Dave Murray], GIS Coordinator at [http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/ City of Westminster]
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# Ayesa Martínez Serrano, Estudiante de Doctorado en [http://www.ciga.unam.mx/ Geografía del Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la UNAM-México]
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-crosby/15/b7/114 Christopher Crosby], co-founder, [http://www.opentopography.org/ OpenTopography]
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# [http://sg.linkedin.com/in/sgganesh Shanmugam Ganeshkumar], Vice President - Consulting, [http://www.geoicon.com GeoICON]
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# [[User:Chaitanya|Chaitanya Kumar CH]], GIS Developer with [http://www.egis-geoplan.com/ Egis Geoplan - India] and OSGeo Charter member.
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# KS Rajan, Associate Professor and Head, [http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/ Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad]  and Chairman, [http://www.kaiinos.com/ KAIINOS Geospatial Technologies]; Promoter and Supported of Open Source, Open Data, Open Standards and e-Governance in India
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# Pericles Nacionales, RS/GIS Specialist and OSGeo Charter member.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilecraciunescu Vasile Crăciunescu], Researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration and OSGeo Board member.
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# [http://geo.tuwien.ac.at/staff/andreas-roncat/ Andreas Roncat] PostDoc Researcher, Research Groups Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, [http://www.geo.tuwien.ac.at/ Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation], Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In full agreement with [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin]: Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:remanuele Rob Emanuele], Software Developer, Azavea Inc.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/iliecodrinamaria Codrina Ilie], Researcher at the Groundwater Engineering Research Center, [http://utcb.ro/utcb/index_en.html Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest] and OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Djay Gérald Fenoy], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
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# [http://www.aston.ac.uk/eas/staff/a-z/dr-lucy-bastin/ Lucy Bastin], Software Developer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission / Computer Science lecturer, UncertML developer, Member of OGC SWG on User Feedback.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-wilkie/b1/3b1/a35 Matt Wilkie], Geomatics Analyst at [http://www.gov.yk.ca/ Yukon Government], [http://www.env.gov.yk.ca/geomatics Department of Environment]. A practising GIS Professional for 20+ years. Throughout that time, the process of manipulating data into, through and out of proprietary formats has been the most aggravating source of inefficiency and wasted time. Things are hard enough without adding unnecessary barriers.
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# [[User:Annakrat|Anna Petrasova]], OSGeo Charter Member, GRASS GIS developer
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-seibel-gisp/45/517/942 Mark Seibel], Geospatial Hacker. Long live open Geo data & software.
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# [http://www.wrsc.org/people/ben-discoe Ben Discoe], [http://vterrain.org/ Virtual Terrain Project] and [http://www.leica-geosystems.us/en/HDS-Laser-Scanners-SW_5570.htm Leica Geosystems HDS], I wrangle point clouds every day. Semi-open E57 is bad enough.  No more closed formats!
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilda-clos/19/21b/391 Ilda Clos], GIS & IWRM specialist
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# [[User:Danielkastl|Daniel Kastl]], Founder [http://georepublic.info Georepublic] and OSGeo Charter Member
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Geejee Gert-Jan van der Weijden] Chairman of OSGeo.nl (local Dutch chapter)
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:rjhale1971 Randal Hale] Owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc
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# Volker Wichmann, [http://www.saga-gis.org SAGA GIS] and [http://www.laserdata.at LASERDATA LIS] developer
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/erictheise Eric Theise], Software Developer, San Francisco, CA.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/geogeek Darrell Fuhriman], Director of Technology, Renewable Funding/ Adjunct Instructor, [http://www.pdx.edu/geography/ Department of Geography, Portland State University]
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilkka-korpela/85/96/875 Ilkka Korpela], Academy Research Fellow, [http://university.helsinki.fi/en University of Helsinki]. Open formats benefit everyone.
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# [http://www.pdx.edu/profile/meet-researcher-david-percy David Percy], Faculty, [http://geology.pdx.edu/ Dept of Geology, Portland State University].
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# [http://dggs.alaska.gov/pubs/staff/kawoods Ken Woods], [http://dggs.alaska.gov/ Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys].  Providing a web-based map interface to the entire collection of  [http://maps.dggs.alaska.gov/elevationdata all publicly available point-cloud data] in Alaska, USA.
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# [[User:Wenzeslaus|Vaclav Petras]], using [http://grass.osgeo.org/grass70/manuals/r.in.lidar.html r.in.lidar] and [http://grass.osgeo.org/grass70/manuals/v.in.lidar.html v.in.lidar] in [http://grass.osgeo.org/ GRASS GIS] and afraid of [http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/elibrary/case/complex-singularity-versus-openness formats embraced by one vendor]
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# [http://cehv.osu.edu/people/nespor.2 Jan Nespor], [http://www.osu.edu/ Ohio State University]
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcosninoruiz Dr. Marcos Nino-Ruiz], Geospatial e-Enabler, [http://aurin.org.au/ AURIN] - [http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ The University of Melbourne], Australia
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# Ed Russell, [http://www.ctmap.com/Computer Terrain Mapping, Inc.], Longmont, Colorado
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jim-robb/3/90/195 Jim Robb], [http://www.ziadesigngroup.com/ Zia Design Group/Zia Maps LLC], Boulder, Colorado. Establish and legally support an Open LiDAR format.
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# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/travis-flohr/6/8a3/938 Travis Flohr], [http://la.wisc.edu/ University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Landscape Architecture]. Open geo standards are imperative to be successful in a transdisciplinary and collaborative world.
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# [http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges/staff/academic-staff/pfb/ Pete Bunting] Senior Lecturer in Remote Sensing within the [http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University] and developer of the open source [http://www.spdlib.org SPDLib] software package for processing LiDAR data.
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# Chris Clasen, Lidar Scientist, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
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# [http://au.linkedin.com/in/peterscarth Peter Scarth] Senior Research Scientist [http://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/jrsrp Joint Remote Sensing Research Program]. Open standards are essential for research data archival and reuse.
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Just Just van den Broecke] OSGeo Charter member and Secretary of OSGeo.nl (Dutch Local Chapter)
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# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:fjbehr Franz-Josef Behr] Professor of spatial information processing at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences
 +
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/monia-molinari/8a/b78/a48 Monia Elisa Molinari], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
 +
# Don Brown, USGS, Enterprise GIS Specialist.
 +
# [http://www.xing.com/profile/Thomas_Baumann84 Thomas Baumann], [http://geosysnet.de geoSYS], Project Manager GIS+Webmapping.
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:mlennert Moritz Lennert], Université Libre de Bruxelles, Member of the GRASS GIS PSC
 +
# Paulo Machado, [http://www.ptinovacao.pt/en/ Portugal Telecom Inovação] Committed to open data standards and open source software.
 +
# [http://igeat.ulb.ac.be/fr/equipe/details/person/eleonore-wolff/ Eleonore Wolff], [http://www.ulb.ac.be/facs/sciences/index.html Universite Libre de Bruxelles]
 +
# [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Romanuel_Ramon_Antunez/ Romanuel Ramon Antunez], Member of UACEE, GIS Developer, Professor  at [http://www.uci.cu University of Informatics Science], Cuba.
 +
# [http://ajolma.net Ari Jolma], Biwatech Ltd.
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pmeems Paul Meems], Active GIS developer in the [http://mapwindow4.codeplex.com/ MapWindow Open Source GIS] team.
 +
# [http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ljsox Leslie John Sox], Master's GIS Student, NCSU Center for Geospatial Analytics,[http://cnr.ncsu.edu/geospatial], Degrees in Laser and Electro-Optics Technology, Geospatial Information Science, Raleigh, NC.
 +
#[http://carlosgrohmann.com Carlos H. Grohmann], Assistant Professor (GIS/RS), University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:cschweik Charles Schweik], Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Rhaubourg Régis Haubourg], GIS manager, Adour-Garonne Water Basin Agency, France
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:kalxas Angelos Tzotsos], OSGeo Charter Member
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:EdzerPebesma Edzer Pebesma], Professor, Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:oosterkamp Hugo Oosterkamp], Consultant Water & Sanitation
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:brylie Brylie Christopher Oxley] Free/Open Source software developer
 +
# [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riccardo_Civico Riccardo Civico] Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy
 +
# [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlo_Alberto_Brunori Carlo Alberto Brunori] Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Rashad Rashad KM], Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:anibal Aníbal Pacheco], Developer, [http://agesic.gub.uy/ e-Government Agency], Uruguay.
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Newmat Mattias Nyström], Researcher, [http://blogg.slu.se/fjarranalys/ Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences], Sweden. PhD in remote sensing of forests and now working with time series of remote sensing data and a remote sensing lab for the forestry education at the University.
 +
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tom-mueller/7/a41/911 Thomas Mueller], Ph.D., GISP, California University of Pennsylvania, [http://www.calu.edu/academics/colleges/eberly/earth-science/index.htm Department of Earth Sciences]
 +
# [https://www.linkedin.com/pub/cody-burns/37/a70/22a Cody Burns], Geophysical Land Services
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:alexbruy Alexander Bruy], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nikos Nikos Alexandris]
 +
# [http://www.dgs.udel.edu/profile/john-callahan John Callahan], Research Scientist, Delaware Geological Survey, University of Delaware
 +
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Imincik Ivan Minčík], Independent GIS consultant and solutions architect, OSGeo Charter member
 +
# [https://no.linkedin.com/in/cmalmquist Christian Malmquist], Gemoatics Engineer, [http://kartverket.no/en/ Norwegian Mapping Authority] and [http://www.ntnu.edu/ Norwegian University of Science and Technology]
  
 
=Background=
 
=Background=
 
==About LiDAR==
 
==About LiDAR==
  
−
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement unit much like a radar system that uses laser light instead of electromagnetic waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission. A common storage format for these point cloud data is the LAS format.
+
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, but one that uses laser light instead of radio waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.
  
 
For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.
 
For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.
  
−
==LAS limitations==
+
==LAS Limitations==
  
 
Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:
 
Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:
Line 35: Line 180:
 
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
 
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
 
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
 
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
−
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20:1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
+
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20''':'''1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
 
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
 
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
 
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.
 
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.
  
−
==Closed "Optimized LAS" format from ESRI==
 
−
ESRI has announced the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format).
 
  
−
This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].
+
=='Optimized LAS' A ''' ''Proprietary'' ESRI Format'''==
 +
ESRI announced, 12 January 2014, the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].
  
−
One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a free Windows DLL that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS".
+
The implementation of the "Optimized LAS" format is not available as Open Source and the format and algorithm details itself are undocumented, which means nobody can currently create alternate implementations, neither closed nor Open Source. This causes both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. It creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.
  
−
Note there is a distinct difference between "free" and "open". Unless ESRI releases the Windows DLL under an "open" license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.
+
One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a Windows only library (DLL) as a free-of-charge (gratis) download that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between a "free-of-charge" binary distribution of DLLs and publishing something as "Open Source". Unless the source code of the library is released as Open Source under an Open Source license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.
  
−
In particular, the "Optimized LAS" format is neither published, nor available under any open license, which provides both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. This creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.
+
Ironically, ESRI later placed their '''binary''' library files [http://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library on github] accompanied by an Apache License, but no source code was published. The distribution of binaries without source code is allowed by Apache License, but very uncommon and misleading, to say the least. The practice goes against the basic idea of “Open Source” and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) even has an FAQ entry on the obvious contradiction of [http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution “Open Source” without source code].
  
−
==OGCs efforts so far to enable Open standards in LiDAR ==
+
==OGC's Efforts For An ''' ''Open'' LiDAR Standard'''==
  
 
The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.
 
The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.
Line 56: Line 200:
 
Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:
 
Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:
 
    
 
    
−
: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to at least 2007. http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."
+
: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf at least 2007]. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."
  
 
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
 
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
 
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program  E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details.  OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.
 
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program  E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details.  OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.
  
−
==History: LAS and "Optimized LAS"==
 
  
−
Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history LAS and "Optimized LAS":
+
==History: LAS and ESRI's 'Optimized LAS'==
 +
 
 +
Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":
  
 
: '''Summary:'''
 
: '''Summary:'''
Line 69: Line 214:
 
:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
 
:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
 
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
 
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
−
:* ESRI initially opened dialogue suggesting to embrace open source [http://laszip.org LAZ], the de-facto community standard for compressed LiDAR.
+
:* ESRI discussed embracing the open [http://laszip.org LAZ] format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
−
:* Simultaneously ESRI developed their own proprietary format, "Optimized LAS" with a *.zlas file extension.
 
 
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
 
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
−
:* ESRI's closed "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.
+
:* ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.
  
 
: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''
 
: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''
  
−
: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then the [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange standard for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.
+
: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then ASPRS's [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.
  
 
: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''
 
: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''
Line 82: Line 226:
 
: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.
 
: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.
  
−
: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."
+
: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."
  
−
: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [closed] LAS Dataset file'''
+
: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file'''
  
−
: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that would group collections of files into one logical unit. This was a useful addition but unfortunately ESRI did not share this improvement with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.
+
: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.
  
 
: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''
 
: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''
  
−
: However, there were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about compression in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the de-facto open standard because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a  success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."
+
: There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a  success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."
  
 
: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."
 
: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."
Line 96: Line 240:
 
: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''
 
: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''
  
−
: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So right then Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the kind of clean, well-documented and easy-to-use API for [http://laszip.org LASzip] that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."
+
: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean [http://laszip.org LASzip] API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."
  
−
: Immediately Martin proposed the following to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."
+
: Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."
  
−
: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 extended to include indexing '''
+
: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing '''
  
−
: In July 2013 ESRI added an improvement to their LAS file handling with the release of ArcGIS 10.2, namely spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Just like the LAS Dataset file (*.lasd) this was done with a closed format. Their new proprietary (*.lasx) files have a practically identical look and feel as the open source spatial indexing (*.lax) files introduced a year earlier and [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ published] at the European LiDAR Mapping Forum (ELMF) in December 2012.
+
: With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Their new proprietary *.lasx files were seemingly identical in functionality to the open *.lax files that had been [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/j0qA8NBMHJs/discussion announced] two years earlier - in May 2011 - and were [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ presented] at ELMF in November 2012.
  
−
: After more requests (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]) for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] Martin decided not to wait for funding from ESRI but "code it forward". On July 30th of 2013 Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion announced the release] of a clean well-documented, and easy-to-use DLL with the expectation that developers at ESRI would use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.
+
: '''July 2013: Open LASzip API released'''
 +
 
 +
: After more requests for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]), Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion released] a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.
  
 
: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''
 
: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''
  
−
: All this [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ changed] suddenly in December of 2013 when several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be working on their own proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. ESRI's LAS compression scheme (that has since been dubbed the "LAZ clone") comes with one additional feature, that [http://laszip.org LASzip] is obviously lacking: it is ESRI-controlled technology.
+
: In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. A few days later ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] to confirming this was the case.  
−
 
 
−
: Caught in an instant [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression heated-debate (see comments)] from the LiDAR community, ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] a few days later to confirm the rumors. From day one Martin has taken a very outspoken stance, informing the community about ESRI's actions and lobbying against the "LAZ clone". Martin tried to keep his critical stance "light-hearted" in order not to burn bridges with ESRI. Again and again he engaged in direct personal communication with decision makers and product managers of ESRI pleading to work with the LiDAR community and avoid format fragmentation.
 
−
 
 
−
: Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin repeatedly outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once: (1) add those unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at being the reason for creating the own closed "Optimized LAS" instead of embracing the existing open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format and (2) extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option. Unfortunately Martin's proposal fell on deaf ears at ESRI.
 
  
−
: '''April 2014: Last plea to avoid format fragmentation'''
+
: From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
 +
:# Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
 +
:# Extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.
  
−
: In a final attempt to convince ESRI management, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ press release] to demonstrate how positively the community would react to news of ESRI embracing an open format. This [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] was entirely true except for the claim that ESRI had agreed to such a cooperation. Many people fell for the "good news" and their [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.
+
: '''1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement'''
  
−
: This seemingly positive [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ press release] was widely carried by geospatial news outlets that had not covered the controversy surrounding ESRI's release of "Optimized LAS". This has limited the exposure of the controversy over the new LiDAR format by ESRI, especially evident on [http://www.lidarnews.com/ LiDAR news] that reported every advance of "Optimized LAS" [[http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-the-las-optimizer 1] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/faq-on-esri-las-optimizer 2] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/early-positive-reviews-for-esri-las-optimizer 3] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated-to-include-parallel-decompression 4] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated 5] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-beta-program-for-optimized-las 6] [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esris-zlas-io-library-now-available 7]] without any mention of the controversy.  
+
: In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.
  
 
: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''
 
: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''
  
−
: Martin was able to win [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] as a gold sponsor for [http://laszip.org LASzip] and announced in October 2014 the development of [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that would allow addition of immediate support for the new point types to [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor by utilizing a recoding of new point types into old ones.  
+
: [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] became a Gold Sponsor of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for the development of the [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that was [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/nUFMkKSz53g/discussion beta-released] in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.  
  
 
: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''
 
: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''
  
−
: The final signal from ESRI that they were not willing to cooperate on an open compression standard came in November 2014 with the [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated announcement] that ESRI had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS". This ended all hopes of devising a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had pleaded with ESRI earlier.
+
: In November 2014 [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated ESRI announced] that they had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.
  
−
: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] their closed format. ESRI blurs the distinction between the open LAS standard and their own proprietary format by calling it "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS". This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. Although the ASPRS holds a clearly spelled-out copyright on the name "LAS", as of April 2015, the LAS Working Group (LWG) has yet to make an official statement regarding ESRI's exploitation of the "LAS" name in promoting their new closed LiDAR format.
+
: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/committees/standards/LAS_1_4_r13.pdf custodians of the LAS format], the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ yet to make an official statement] regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.
  
 
=Value of Standards=
 
=Value of Standards=
  
−
The importance of Open Standards is described is most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
+
The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
−
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT, Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf</ref>
+
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – [http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT], Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office</ref>
  
−
The value of Open Standards have been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic
+
The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.
−
growth.
 
  
 
: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>
 
: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>
 +
 +
=Further Reading=
 +
 +
# [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS]
 +
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib]
 +
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg]
 +
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg]
 +
# [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression/ ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS"]
 +
# [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 ESRI description of "Optimised LAS"]
 +
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list]
 +
# [http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/esris-claim-at-being-good-standards.html Cameron Shorter refutes ESRI's initial response and claim to be good Open Standards citizens]
 +
# [http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html Adena Schutzberg questions why some spatial media are not running this story]
 +
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014222.html Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri, responds, suggesting commitment to address concerns]
 +
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014211.html Summary of initial responses after delivering the open letter]
 +
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/05/12/five-myths-about-las-laz-and-optimized-las/ Martin Isenburg provides clarifications to five wrong statements overheard at an ASPRS conference]
 +
 +
News coverage:
 +
# [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans.aspx IT News]
 +
# [http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/04/21/1624219/osgeo-foundation-up-in-arms-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans Slashdot]
 +
# [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html Heise Online] [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lidar-Format-War-Geo-Softwarehaus-Esri-vs-Geo-Community-2615341.html Follow-Up] - German speaking IT news.
 +
# [http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/ Spatial Source]
 +
# [http://slashgeo.org/2015/04/23/batch-geonews-lidar-standards-woes-maps-on-apple-watch-esri-maps-for-office-3-and-much-more/ Slashgeo]
 +
# [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-great-airplane-laser-debate-is-as-youd-expect-about-file-formats Motherboard]
 +
# [http://geohipster.com/2015/05/04/martin-isenburg-may-the-foss-be-with-laz/ GeoHipster]
 +
 +
Blog coverage:
 +
# [http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html Adena Schutzberg]
 +
# [http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/osgeo-open-letter-lidar-laszip-vs-esri/ Oliver Doepner]
 +
# [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/esri-osgeo-lidar-and-things Randal Hale]
 +
 +
=Outcomes=
 +
* 01 June 2015:  Martin Isenburg presented on need for LiDAR format interoperability at OGC Technical Committee Meeting
 +
* 18 June 2015 [http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2236 OGC sets up Point Cloud Domain Working Group to formalise / develop LiDAR standard(s)], [http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/06/23/ogc-move-to-address-point-cloud-data/ news coverage]
 +
*
  
 
=References=
 
=References=
  
 
<references />
 
<references />
 +
 +
[[Category: Standards]]

Latest revision as of 12:32, 16 March 2021

Cover Letter from the OSGeo Board of Directors

The Board of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is presenting this letter to the geospatial community at large. The letter highlights concerns about the need for standards in LiDAR data formats, from many people within the OSGeo community. Although specific organizations are named in the letter, the OSGeo Board of Directors would like to focus on the general importance of standards in the industry, and learn from this example so we can make geospatial information easily accessible to all users. As always, if there is anything that the OSGeo Board can do to help, then please let us know.

Signed:

  • Jeff McKenna (OSGeo President), Michael Smith (OSGeo Treasurer), Jáchym Čepický (OSGeo Secretary), Massimiliano Cannata, Vasile Craciunescu, Bart van den Eijnden, Gérald Fenoy, Anne Ghisla, Jorge Sanz

Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR

April 2015.

We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" proprietary format. This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.


We request that:

  1. The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
  2. ESRI support the OGC in their mission "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI joins with the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASlib.
  3. Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
  4. The custodians of the open LAS format LAS Working Group (LWG), who are part of American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.

Signed

Name, Affiliation(s), Optional comment on interest in Open LiDAR format

  1. Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
  2. Martin Isenburg, founder of rapidlasso GmbH and creator of LASzip, LAStools, and PulseWaves.
  3. Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at LISAsoft. Core contributor and coordinator of OSGeo-Live. Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
  4. Stefan Keller, founder and director of Geometa Lab; Professor in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
  5. Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" NSDI. Open standards are essential for this.
  6. Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
  7. Maria Antonia Brovelli, Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy and to Open Principles in Research.
  8. Ron Fortunato, President of Trillium Learning LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
  9. Armin Schmidt, Chief Developer at GeodataWIZ Ltd and Chairman of ISAP, committed to better science through Open Data.
  10. Giuseppe Conti, CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
  11. Jorge Gustavo Rocha, Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through Open Data.
  12. Jim Miller, University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
  13. Brandt Melick, Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA. The need to promote open solutions is paramount.
  14. Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
  15. Jorg M. Hacker, Professor, Director/Chief Scientist of Airborne Research Australia, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
  16. Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière, France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
  17. Adryane Gorayeb, Federal University of Ceará Brazil, Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
  18. Yury Ryabov, PhD, Senior researcher at Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
  19. María Teresa Lamelas, Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza, GeoForest-IUCA. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
  20. David Herries, Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation. Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation. This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
  21. Iván Sánchez Ortega, Mazemap. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
  22. Anita Graser, GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
  23. Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Geomaticblog. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
  24. Professor Karl Donert, President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
  25. Drew Fenton, Boulder Creek, CA Countdown to the Last Coast Redwood. Please protect Open Standards for geospatial data!
  26. Wladimir Szczerban, Geoinquiets Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
  27. Volker Mische, OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
  28. Carlos López Quintanilla, PSIG Geoinquiets GIS consultant, Spain
  29. Stephen Woodbridge, iMaptools, OSGeo Charter member.
  30. Luca Delucchi, Fondazione Edmund Mach, OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
  31. Antoine Cottin, CTO of Carbomap Ltd. and creator of Fleurdelas, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
  32. Sandro Santilli, NetLab, Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
  33. Alessandro Pasotti, ItOpen, GIS Free Software Developer.
  34. Eduard Roccatello, 3DGIS, 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
  35. Andrea Antonello, HydroloGIS, OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
  36. Stefano Campus, President of GFOSS.it Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
  37. Margherita Di Leo, OSGeo Charter Member
  38. Sergio Acosta y Lara, OSGeo Charter Member
  39. Maxim Dubinin, CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
  40. Stefano Costa, Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy
  41. Jonathan Greenberg, Assistant Professor, GEARS Laboratory, Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  42. Bob Basques, Saint Paul, Mn., Technical Director for SharedGeo.
  43. Maning Sambale, OSGeo Charter Member
  44. Paolo Cavallini, QGIS PSC
  45. Phillip Davis, Member OSGeo Geo For All education advisory board, Director @ GeoAcademy
  46. Nicolas Bozon, Researcher and software developer, OSGeo Charter Member
  47. Ruslan Rainis, Professor, Director, Centre for Research Initiatives in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences(CRI-LASS). Open GeoInformation for a Sustainable Tomorrow and the Bottom Billions.
  48. Silvia Franceschi, HydroloGIS, OSGeo Charter member, Environmental Engineer Open Source GIS power user, HydroloGIS co-founder.
  49. Oscar Martinez Rubi Netherlands eScience Center eScience engineer.
  50. Werner Macho, QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
  51. Giuseppe Patti, Geologist and Freelance Geospatial Advisor, GFOSS supporter.
  52. Daniel Rappo, Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
  53. Juan Ignacio Varela, Freelance Geospatial Advisor and OSGeo Local Chapter Member.
  54. Daniel Morissette, President at Mapgears, OSGeo Charter member.
  55. Raul Nanclares, RS&GIS Specialist
  56. Riccardo Rigon, Professor at University of Trento (Italy)
  57. Zoltan Siki Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), OSGeo Charter member.
  58. Michael Lefsky, Professor of Remote Sensing Science, Colorado State University and Director, Center for Ecological Applications of Lidar.
  59. Lucas Villa Real, Research software engineer at IBM Research - Brazil.
  60. Loren Dawe, GIS Manager at Terra Remote Sensing Inc. Lidar Supplier and Open Standards Advocate
  61. Frank Warmerdam, Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
  62. Jens Ingensand, Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
  63. Siri Jodha Khalsa, Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
  64. Andreas Neumann, GIS manager, City of Uster, Kanton Zurich, Switzerland
  65. Yann Chemin, Researcher - Remote Sensing, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
  66. Etienne B. Racine, Geomatics and remote sensing project manager, WSP, Canada
  67. Alejandro Hinojosa, CICESE Research Center, Earth Sciences Division, GIS & Remote Sensing Lab, Ensenada, Mexico
  68. Massimo Di Stefano, OSGeo Charter Member
  69. Rafael Moreno, University of Colorado Denver, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences. Openness is fundamental to progress.
  70. Peter Drexel, GIS manager, State of Vorarlberg (State Survey Office), Austria
  71. Marco Minghini, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Research.
  72. Candan Eylül Kilsedar, WebGIS Developer, Research Fellow at Politecnico di Milano.
  73. Alastair McKinstry, Debian Linux meteorology/GIS developer, Ireland
  74. Elena Mezzini, Remote-sensing in forest ecology, Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.
  75. Mihai A. Tanase, Honorary fellow, Dept. of Forest and Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
  76. Dave Murray, GIS Coordinator at City of Westminster
  77. Ayesa Martínez Serrano, Estudiante de Doctorado en Geografía del Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la UNAM-México
  78. Christopher Crosby, co-founder, OpenTopography
  79. Shanmugam Ganeshkumar, Vice President - Consulting, GeoICON
  80. Chaitanya Kumar CH, GIS Developer with Egis Geoplan - India and OSGeo Charter member.
  81. KS Rajan, Associate Professor and Head, Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad and Chairman, KAIINOS Geospatial Technologies; Promoter and Supported of Open Source, Open Data, Open Standards and e-Governance in India
  82. Pericles Nacionales, RS/GIS Specialist and OSGeo Charter member.
  83. Vasile Crăciunescu, Researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration and OSGeo Board member.
  84. Andreas Roncat PostDoc Researcher, Research Groups Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In full agreement with Maxim Dubinin: Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
  85. Rob Emanuele, Software Developer, Azavea Inc.
  86. Codrina Ilie, Researcher at the Groundwater Engineering Research Center, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest and OSGeo Charter Member
  87. Gérald Fenoy, Software Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
  88. Lucy Bastin, Software Developer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission / Computer Science lecturer, UncertML developer, Member of OGC SWG on User Feedback.
  89. Matt Wilkie, Geomatics Analyst at Yukon Government, Department of Environment. A practising GIS Professional for 20+ years. Throughout that time, the process of manipulating data into, through and out of proprietary formats has been the most aggravating source of inefficiency and wasted time. Things are hard enough without adding unnecessary barriers.
  90. Anna Petrasova, OSGeo Charter Member, GRASS GIS developer
  91. Mark Seibel, Geospatial Hacker. Long live open Geo data & software.
  92. Ben Discoe, Virtual Terrain Project and Leica Geosystems HDS, I wrangle point clouds every day. Semi-open E57 is bad enough. No more closed formats!
  93. Ilda Clos, GIS & IWRM specialist
  94. Daniel Kastl, Founder Georepublic and OSGeo Charter Member
  95. Gert-Jan van der Weijden Chairman of OSGeo.nl (local Dutch chapter)
  96. Randal Hale Owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc
  97. Volker Wichmann, SAGA GIS and LASERDATA LIS developer
  98. Eric Theise, Software Developer, San Francisco, CA.
  99. Darrell Fuhriman, Director of Technology, Renewable Funding/ Adjunct Instructor, Department of Geography, Portland State University
  100. Ilkka Korpela, Academy Research Fellow, University of Helsinki. Open formats benefit everyone.
  101. David Percy, Faculty, Dept of Geology, Portland State University.
  102. Ken Woods, Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Providing a web-based map interface to the entire collection of all publicly available point-cloud data in Alaska, USA.
  103. Vaclav Petras, using r.in.lidar and v.in.lidar in GRASS GIS and afraid of formats embraced by one vendor
  104. Jan Nespor, Ohio State University
  105. Dr. Marcos Nino-Ruiz, Geospatial e-Enabler, AURIN - The University of Melbourne, Australia
  106. Ed Russell, Terrain Mapping, Inc., Longmont, Colorado
  107. Jim Robb, Zia Design Group/Zia Maps LLC, Boulder, Colorado. Establish and legally support an Open LiDAR format.
  108. Travis Flohr, University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Landscape Architecture. Open geo standards are imperative to be successful in a transdisciplinary and collaborative world.
  109. Pete Bunting Senior Lecturer in Remote Sensing within the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University and developer of the open source SPDLib software package for processing LiDAR data.
  110. Chris Clasen, Lidar Scientist, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  111. Peter Scarth Senior Research Scientist Joint Remote Sensing Research Program. Open standards are essential for research data archival and reuse.
  112. Just van den Broecke OSGeo Charter member and Secretary of OSGeo.nl (Dutch Local Chapter)
  113. Franz-Josef Behr Professor of spatial information processing at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences
  114. Monia Elisa Molinari, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano.
  115. Don Brown, USGS, Enterprise GIS Specialist.
  116. Thomas Baumann, geoSYS, Project Manager GIS+Webmapping.
  117. Moritz Lennert, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Member of the GRASS GIS PSC
  118. Paulo Machado, Portugal Telecom Inovação Committed to open data standards and open source software.
  119. Eleonore Wolff, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
  120. Romanuel Ramon Antunez, Member of UACEE, GIS Developer, Professor at University of Informatics Science, Cuba.
  121. Ari Jolma, Biwatech Ltd.
  122. Paul Meems, Active GIS developer in the MapWindow Open Source GIS team.
  123. Leslie John Sox, Master's GIS Student, NCSU Center for Geospatial Analytics,[1], Degrees in Laser and Electro-Optics Technology, Geospatial Information Science, Raleigh, NC.
  124. Carlos H. Grohmann, Assistant Professor (GIS/RS), University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
  125. Charles Schweik, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  126. Régis Haubourg, GIS manager, Adour-Garonne Water Basin Agency, France
  127. Angelos Tzotsos, OSGeo Charter Member
  128. Edzer Pebesma, Professor, Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster
  129. Hugo Oosterkamp, Consultant Water & Sanitation
  130. Brylie Christopher Oxley Free/Open Source software developer
  131. Riccardo Civico Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy
  132. Carlo Alberto Brunori Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Italy
  133. Rashad KM, Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
  134. Aníbal Pacheco, Developer, e-Government Agency, Uruguay.
  135. Mattias Nyström, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. PhD in remote sensing of forests and now working with time series of remote sensing data and a remote sensing lab for the forestry education at the University.
  136. Thomas Mueller, Ph.D., GISP, California University of Pennsylvania, Department of Earth Sciences
  137. Cody Burns, Geophysical Land Services
  138. Alexander Bruy, Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
  139. Nikos Alexandris
  140. John Callahan, Research Scientist, Delaware Geological Survey, University of Delaware
  141. Ivan Minčík, Independent GIS consultant and solutions architect, OSGeo Charter member
  142. Christian Malmquist, Gemoatics Engineer, Norwegian Mapping Authority and Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Background

About LiDAR

LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, but one that uses laser light instead of radio waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.

For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the “LAS” format, and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: libLAS and LASlib. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called LASzip that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added native support for these compressed LAZ files.

LAS Limitations

Quoting Paul Ramsey:

LAS format is not without its drawbacks:
  • While it is a binary format and does not waste any space unnecessarily, neither does it apply any compression to the data it stores. That’s not good for archival use.
  • Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
  • An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20:1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
  • Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.


'Optimized LAS' A Proprietary ESRI Format

ESRI announced, 12 January 2014, the release of an "Optimized LAS" format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open LASzip format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [1 2 3 4 5 6].

The implementation of the "Optimized LAS" format is not available as Open Source and the format and algorithm details itself are undocumented, which means nobody can currently create alternate implementations, neither closed nor Open Source. This causes both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. It creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.

One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a Windows only library (DLL) as a free-of-charge (gratis) download that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between a "free-of-charge" binary distribution of DLLs and publishing something as "Open Source". Unless the source code of the library is released as Open Source under an Open Source license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.

Ironically, ESRI later placed their binary library files on github accompanied by an Apache License, but no source code was published. The distribution of binaries without source code is allowed by Apache License, but very uncommon and misleading, to say the least. The practice goes against the basic idea of “Open Source” and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) even has an FAQ entry on the obvious contradiction of “Open Source” without source code.

OGC's Efforts For An Open LiDAR Standard

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.

Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:

"Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to at least 2007. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."

Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.

The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details. OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.


History: LAS and ESRI's 'Optimized LAS'

Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of LASzip, LAStools and PulseWaves, explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":

Summary:
  • The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
  • Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
  • ESRI discussed embracing the open LAZ format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
  • The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
  • ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open LASzip format.
1998: Original LAS format definition
The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to Lewis Graham. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the ASPRS. Since then ASPRS's LAS Working Group (LWG) has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.
2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group
ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.
Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of LAZ integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."
June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file
In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually public requests.
2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions
There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."
Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."
June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL
At that time LASzip was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from USACE that had turned LASzip from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean LASzip API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."
Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."
July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing
With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Their new proprietary *.lasx files were seemingly identical in functionality to the open *.lax files that had been announced two years earlier - in May 2011 - and were presented at ELMF in November 2012.
July 2013: Open LASzip API released
After more requests for an easier interface to LASzip (in particular for USDA's FUSION), Martin released a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for LAZ to their next release of ArcGIS.
December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format
In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin broke the news as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to LASzip. A few days later ESRI released an official FAQ to confirming this was the case.
From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of LASzip for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
  1. Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
  2. Extend the LASzip compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of LASzip to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.
1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement
In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day prank press release pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community jubilant reactions (see comments) left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.
October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode
Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center became a Gold Sponsor of LASzip for the development of the LAS 1.4 compatibility mode that was beta-released in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in LASzip without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.
November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4
In November 2014 ESRI announced that they had added their own extension for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.
Since then, ESRI has been promoting "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the custodians of the LAS format, the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has yet to make an official statement regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.

Value of Standards

The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:

… Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. [1]

The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.

... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. [2]

Further Reading

  1. Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS
  2. Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib
  3. Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg
  4. First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg
  5. ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS"
  6. ESRI description of "Optimised LAS"
  7. Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list
  8. Cameron Shorter refutes ESRI's initial response and claim to be good Open Standards citizens
  9. Adena Schutzberg questions why some spatial media are not running this story
  10. Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri, responds, suggesting commitment to address concerns
  11. Summary of initial responses after delivering the open letter
  12. Martin Isenburg provides clarifications to five wrong statements overheard at an ASPRS conference

News coverage:

  1. IT News
  2. Slashdot
  3. Heise Online Follow-Up - German speaking IT news.
  4. Spatial Source
  5. Slashgeo
  6. Motherboard
  7. GeoHipster

Blog coverage:

  1. Adena Schutzberg
  2. Oliver Doepner
  3. Randal Hale

Outcomes

References

  1. ↑ All about Open Source – An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT, Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office
  2. ↑ Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization", DINN, 2000. Retrieved March 2015.
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