Transcript Open Source in Photogrammetry

Open Source in Photogrammetry
An Overview By:
Zack Stauber, CMS
[email protected]
What is open source software?
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Software whose source code can be viewed by the public
 For more detailed list of requirements, see Open Source on
http://www.wikipedia.org/)
Often there is a compiled executable available for free download
Often the licensing allows the source to be modified or even sold by
third parties
 For all the possible licenses, see http://www.opensource.org/
 The most liberal is the MIT License
Open source is based on Open Standards (i.e. file formats,
modalities, practices)
 Open standards must be free
 Not patented
 Not derived from or dependent on another commercial product
What is so great about it? Theory
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Free, no risk in trying it out (take note, small businesses)
Downloadable, available without red tape (take note, government)
Flexible: you can tear it apart and change it to suit your needs
Open: You can verify that the source code correctly implements
industry standard practices.
 No black boxes, essential under “Daubert” guidelines
 Often several ways to implement things in evolving fields
 Third parties can correct software and submit patches
What is so great about it? Practice
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Better technical support
 Very few layers between you and the programmers
 Releases are as-fixed rather than on an annual or semiannual
schedule as with commercial software
 You can fix it yourself if you have to
Better operating systems support
 Often written on open source compilers so the code is already
cross platform
Better international support
 Programming groups for larger software applications often
extend to many nations so they have built in support for other
languages, currencies, time-zones, etc.
 Examples: PostgreSQL
What is so great about it? Practice
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Stable
 Programmers are often the first and most demanding users, so it
has to work, or else the programmer wouldn't bother making it
 Spreads by web searches or word-of-mouth, so overwhelming
advertising money cannot spread useless products by brute force
 Examples: Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, GDAL
Generic
 Decentralized international programming groups and a wider
variety of users often incorporates more and more varied user
requests
 Examples: Linux, GDAL, PostgreSQL
What kind of idiots would give
away all that effort for free?
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Originally: universities and other government agencies
 Many commercial software applications originated as university
projects (e.g. GRASS). More than a few became commercial
businesses in the early days (e.g. Khoros). Boo!
 Also, software was ruled patentable (may be about to overturn)
and universities could hold and make money on patents (thank
you Strom Thurmond) so it decreased
What kind of idiots would give
away all that effort for free?
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Later: innovative businesses
 Only cheap software with many users can be sold as a product
(e.g. ArcGIS, TatukGIS, IDRISI)
 Mashups vs. GIS analysis vs. data production = exponential
 Market model shows hyper expensive software cannot be sold
as a product at a net gain (e.g. Autodesk's MapGuide)
 Rather than selling 200 copies worldwide and providing terrible
support and no improvements, software was given away for free
and services such as customizations were sold (e.g. OSSIM)
Finally the commercial trend is reversing: everyone
 Some companies go under and release their software for free
(e.g. Ingres, Dynamix, Netscape) or change their profit making
model and release their software for free or parts of it for free
(ILWIS, OpenOffice). Yay!
What about OS mapping software?
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http://www.osgeo.org/ Open
Source Geospatial Foundation
(software)
http://www.opengeospatial.org/
Open Geospatial Consortium
(standards)
Web
 MapServer
 WorldWind
 MapGuide
 MapBender
 MapBuilder
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Desktop
 GRASS
 QGis
 uDig
 gvSIG
Industrial strength
 PostgreSQL/PostGIS
 FWTools
Programming Tools
 GDAL
 GEOS
 FDO
 GeoTools
What about photogrammetry OS?
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T'aint None
 No seriously, there is only OSSIM
 GDAL is a great platform to build on
http://www.nmosgeo.org/ wants you!
 Can you program?
 Are you a math nerd?
 Do you like beer?
 2 of 3 required (not really)