Development of OS Satellite Image Processing/Mapping

Ken Melero writes "ImageLinks, in collaboration with Federal Agencies and Florida Tech is developing Open Source software for satellite image processing and mapping. The Open Source Software Image Map (OSSIM) experiment will be hosted on RemoteSensing.org and will demonstrate the application of open source software development techniques in meeting government requirements. See the press release for more information. " Looks cool - GPL as the license.

Comments

Wow, it must be IR day on Slashdot.

[tcd004]

Heres are some great consequences of high-res, remote satellite imaging links, (the results of which are only compounded by OS'ing the technology.)

www.spaceimaging.com (the first ones to sell commercial high-res imagery, very cool site with sat photo dowonloads)

A report by the Carnegie Endownment For Internatinal Peace
on the effects of commercial High-res.
Secrets for Sale

An abstract is posted online with the full report available for download.

tcd004 Here's my Microsoft Parody, where's yours.

Hope for better satelite data format documentation

[Brand X]

In several years of working in physics/programming with satellite tracking data, I found out just how bad the documentation and standards were for the various formats for data on and from satelites. The images were often fine, being compressed versions of standard formats, but what we'll be looking at here, it seems, would require additionally the exact positional data for the satellite body. Here's hoping the open source approach leads to better standards and documentation of data formats for time, position relative to the earth (and orientation), and so forth.

From experience, it will more likely result in filters of resolutions with a tremendous range, both in granularity and depth, being interpolated and patched together. I'm not sure I believe that OS will get around the traditional bailing wire and duct tape aproach of engineers in the field...

Corporate Adaptation

[Proteus]

This is a very interesting use of the Open Source community. I applaud the effort.

That said, I have to express a mixture of excitement and concern over what the success of this project could mean. On the one hand, it could mean that corporate culture will begin (slowly) to adapt to the Open Source model. On the other, it could mean that corporations will glean the hard work of Open Source developers and cash in, doing very little actual work themselves.

In the first case, I am happy on two counts: changing corporate culture is difficult, and if the Open Source Movement succeeds, it will be a big "feather" in our collective hat; and, corporate adaptation means that more companies are likely to open hardware specs for Linux support, and software specs for cross-platform ports.

In the second case, I have mixed feelings: having a corporate infrastructure to market and distribute Open Source works has the makings of a rather sound business model -- however, the less ethical companies out there (which, IMHO are a vast majority) may abuse the model so thoroughly that Open Source developers are alienated.

However, I cannot decide whether Open Source would be hurt, or if developers would just move thier resources to the more ethical companies. The concern is that even if the latter, the "evil" orgs can still get the work -- possibly with even less effort.

Anyone see a way around that mess?

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Re:Corporate Adaptation

[Proteus]

If companies took Open Source and made it less open, then I doubt they'd get many developers. And if they took Open Source and exploited the free software without doing a lot of the development themselves, then, hey, what's wrong with that? Isn't that sort of what companies that distribute Linux do?

I'm not terribly concerned that anyone will make Open software less open (though the GPL has yet to be thoroughly tested in court), or that companies will make money selling support for free products like Linux distros do.

My concern is that companies will start saying "hey, we have this idea, lets give it to the Open Source community, and they'll write it for us." Then they simply obfuscate the open source nature of the product and pack it up. Now, to geeks and programmers who keep tabs and *shock* read licenses, this probably would have little effect. But the mass populace won't know the difference. That's a Bad Thing because it really doesn't further the goals of Open Source -- the availability of Free Software to whomever wants it.

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As usual, partially old news.

[zorgon]

The Image Processing Workbench (IPW) of UCSB has been open source and freely available for years, and recent ports include Linux. Very powerful collection of command line Unix utilities written in C that can be pipelined together. It's specifically designed to work with remote sensing data although it does not incorporate image projection (mapping) and navigation functions. There is still a need for freely available OS tools for mapping and navigation.