GPS Toolkit (GPSTk) 1.0 Released

rmach writes "Based on many years of work performed at ARL:UT, we have release GPSTk under the GNU LGPL. GPSTk is a cross platform library and set of applications that provides both fundamental and advanced GPS processing algorithms to the GPS and open source community. A wide array of functions are provided by the GPSTk library, including: RINEX I/O, ephemeris calculation, P-code generation, atmospheric refraction models, and positioning algorithms. GPSTk applications provided more concrete benefits to the user, including: cycle slip detection and removal, calculation of the Total Electron Content (TEC) of the ionosphere, position residual computation, and RINEX file manipulation. The library is about 41,000 SLOC with a COCOMO estimated cost to develop of about $1.3 million. You can also read more about it in the current issue (September '04) of Linux Journal."

Comments

It's probably just me, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

... I don't even remotely understand what this post is about. ARLUT? RINEX? cycle slip detection? TEC? SLOC? COCOMO?

Re:It's probably just me, but....

[asciono]

I wonder how they estimate the cost of development when you find this in the code?

00231 // This code "stolen" from Sven Reifegerste (zorci@gmx.de).
00232 // Found at http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~sr21/crctester.c
00233 // from link at http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~sr21/crc.html

Isn't Sven more expensive than a student? And how can they release it under the LGPL with "stolen" code? :P

that's all fine and good, but

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone that has worked with GPS and GIS data know the real hard part is fixing and processing all the data. Getting the data into a database in a normalized format is perhaps one of the most challenging parts of building a gps/gis application. luckily companies like NavTech provide good data that is supplemented with their own surveys.

This is just a bunch of

[BubbaThePirate]

gobbledigoop.

Seriously, a boatload of acronyms i know nothing about.
Isn't this what the more specialized sections are for? Why do BSD and Apache articles get thrown to the corner, while GPS news get the front page?

I'm not trying to troll. Just wondering how important GPS is to /. readers.

Re:This is just a bunch of

[bsd4me]

I think the importance is that a project of this magnitude and complication was released to the public under a nice license.

Does anybody know a site

[Anonymous Coward]

that can translate this news into something remotely resembling plain english?

Thanks.

LGPL!

[rumblin'rabbit]

Lord be praised, it's under the LGPL. This means corporations can use the package in their software, and have the resulting applications delivered externally, without having to make all of their source in the program publicly available. If it were released under the (full) GPL, the package would find much more limited use.

Root-Mean-Square (ie, Richard Stallman) won't like it, of course. The FSF strongly recommends all software be under the GPL, not the LGPL. Myself, I think that's a serious mistake. Private enterprise is not, and never has been, the enemy. It's particularly a mistake when you want a package to become a de facto standard, and then do your best to ensure the private sector can't use it.

I thought I would introduce some politics into what is a rather boring technical /. post.

Also from ARL:UT...

[MacGoldstein]

Oddly enough, a project exists at ARL that does exactly that. If you feel like reading about it, look at http://sgl.arlut.utexas.edu/.

I don't think it's closed source, but since I'm working on it, it never really seems closed or open to me :-P. The problem isn't that we don't want it to be open, it's that the propagation models aren't written in house, and they're all closed.

Re:Finally -- a way to control my dog's shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the location part, but what about the defication-detection system? This wouldn't happen to require an anal probe, would it?