September 25, 2007
The big announcement
at OSGEO's Free and Open Source
Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference on Tuesday morning was from
Autodesk. The company has acquired Mentor Software of
Thornton, Colorado and will put its map projection libraries into open
source as an OSGeo project. When Geoff Zeiss of Autodesk made the
announcement at 9:30am here in Victoria, to a room of nearly 700
attendees, it seemed only a handful of us "got it." I was the first to
clap loudly, getting odd looks from my neighbors.
They didn't know what I know. What do I know? Let's go back in time.
It's 1990 or so. I'm doing AutoCAD mapping at a consulting firm. I'm
using a product called Hawkeye from Mentor. It lets me work in two
different coordinate systems at once (if I recall correctly). At some
point I need technical support. I call the support number. I get Norm
Olsen. He helps me out. He's smart. Later I read Mentor's newsletter
and, like many others, use the 1-800-ask-norm phone number for help
with projections. Fast-forward to 1998 or so. I'm working for ESRI. I
head to Thornton to meet Norm (I can't recall why, and if I did, I
probably couldn't say why...). As I come in, the then product manager
for AutoCAD Map is leaving. Hmmm. This code and this guy must rate!
And, I should say, Mentor is a small shop. I checked the website today,
and it said it hadn't been updated since 05/06/03. But the phone number
was still in use back then!
Bottom line: Mentor Software's CS-MAP is the standard software library
for mapping software. Nearly everyone licenses it. Who does not? Of
note: Blue Marble and ESRI have their own. I have to guess in time
they, too, may come over to the open source version.
After the announcement I checked in with a few people here at the
conference. Some of their thoughts, and mine:
- Not every user of other libraries may jump to the new open source version (at least not right away) since their clients may well need the consistency of using the same library over time. Different libraries can give different "answers."
- This deal was signed the night before it was announced.
- Over time it may be that "everyone" uses the same projection code, ideally meaning they all get the "same answer." That'd be cool.
- On the commercial side, Blue Marble will be competing with "free." It just licensed it's libraries to ERMapper before its acquisition by Leica.
- The currently used open source library, PROJ.4, is an open source, and part of the MapTools [corrected 9/29 per comment: originally said "GeoTools OSGeo project"] project. It may exist and be supported for a while, but it is likely that in time one library will "win."
- Some are concerned that the support they've known and loved from Mentor will change as Olsen goes to work for Autodesk. That happens sometimes when big companies acquire smaller ones.
- Word is, the licensing for the open source library will be the most lenient one available (LPGL per CNET).
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| With all due respect, Adena, I think you are a little over-exaggerating in your article when you said, "Mentor Software's CS-MAP is the standard software library for mapping software. Nearly everyone licenses it." While we (Avenza) did for a time use Safe's FME Objects (which uses CS-Maps) in one of our products we have recently pulled it completely in favour of the Blue Marble file format and co-ordinate conversion products (GeoTranslate and GeoCalc). The major reason for this was our dis-satisfaction with the CS-Maps co-ordinate engine which underlies FME. In investigating and researching our needs, we found that opposite to your comments, most organizations are actually using Blue Marble and not Mentor and that more and more have been leaving Mentor over the last few years. Almost every major oil company and defense contractor I can think of uses Blue Marble. I am not sure that making it open source will change this as support and accuracy will always be a major issue. Essentially, you get what you pay for and frankly I would feel more confident using a library that is maintained and checked by a commercial interest when building a product that relies so heavily on co-ordinate conversion. |
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| A little birdie told me tonight that Blue Marble Geographics is owned by Avenza Systems, and do you know what? The corporate directory of Maine confirms that the registered President of Blue Marble Geographics is one Edward Florence, of 124 Merton Street, Toronto, Ontario. Mr. Florence, I think you should have declared your interest before writing a comment like the above. |
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| a) fact: Proj4 is not maintained by GeoTools. Because Proj4 is C library while Geotools is java. b) fact: Geotools has established it's own projection library, but using some ideas from Proj4.. i believe. c) Where is the win for th Java OS projects if Mentor is C/C++? d) Having the same results due to the same code would be nice, but there are other things than code that can affect correct transformations. note: projections is not a piece of cake with respect to the applied math. (So, one needs also to show which one is right) stefan @Paul: thanx for investigating |
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