NASA World Wind and Wikipedia
It seems that the Wikipedia nuts police have begun to attack World Wind now.
A Wikipedia editor recently changed the NASA World Wind page, removing all references to it being ‘free’, so what exactly is ‘free’ in Open Source land?
Just more proof that Wikipedia has failed. The simple fact that someone citing a source has more pull than experts just baffles me. Reminds me of an issue last summer when a lead engineer for Mac OS 9 was edited out because he didn’t cite his sources.
I say, it’s not true. So, I clicked on the little edit button, and deleted it. Done! Truth has prevailed; now 10th graders have a reliable source they can crib stuff from when they do their reports.
Then, someone put it back. “reverted an unsourced claim” is the reason; apparently I, a mere Mac OS 9.1 Technical Lead, don’t count as a ‘source’ for something. Rumor site; yes. Someone who was actually at Apple doing stuff; no.
Won’t someone rescue Wikipedia from the police Snidely Whiplash?
[...] I pondered not discussing it… but really, it is a bloody mess. Bull and James are both talking about it.. James has more reasons to hate it that I do. But really, how could I NOT talk about it? [...]
“While World Wind is Open Source Initiative-approved open source (released under the terms of the NASA Open Source Agreement, which is incompatible with the GPL license; but compatible with LGPL), Google Earth is closed source, with all its data (3D buildings, maps, street plans) and code being copyrighted.”
It would seem that free software is GPL software, not software you pay nothing for. This is because wikipedia is in thrall to Stallman and his cohorts. Software on wikipedia isn’t free unless you can access the source and…
“Despite being open source, World Wind is still restricted to Windows (while Google Earth works on MacOS and Linux), relying on the .NET libraries and DirectX… The first Java, cross-platform release is scheduled for sometime in January 2007 [3]. Google has released a Mac OS X and a Linux version of Google Earth.”
It runs on all platforms. So Free means you get source code and it runs everywhere. Also do you notice how a page dealing with worldwind constantly mentions GE and compares WW to GE? The article on WW seems to want to sell you GE instead.
“Majority of add-ons and plugins for World Wind are freely available. Google Earth has additional services such as GPS navigation, for which it charges.”
Hey, guess what- GE has plugins for GPS. Why the hell is this being mentioned in the WW article? The poster has an obvious GE bias and stumbles over himself to mention GE whenever possible.
Fück€n wiki police! I hate those guys.
(Posted from an Austrian-German keyboard)
I’ve been watching wikipedia climb in Google’s search engine. The most recent Google overhaul has their GIS page listed as the number 2 search listing for both “GIS” and “geographic information systems”. For the longest time, esri.com and gis.com dominated the two top listings for as long as I’ve paid attention but last week esri.com dropped to #4.
@ Caitlin:
Interestingly, for GIS as search term in Google, the second GIS software vendor site mentioned after ESRI is Manifold! Third software I could find ranked was GRASS , and then I stopped looking.
PS: I did my search on google.co.uk, bizarrely, on google.com the results are quite different, and QGIS comes between ESRI and Manifold.
Since I am the culprit who mentioned Manifold again here in a completely unrelated post, I wondered how James is going on with his Manifold copy? Any luck playing around with it a bit more, would be great if you could write a little post!
Petz, I’ll be honest I have not had any time. I’ve been in the process of moving into a new house and free time has been at a premium.
I will say I’ve gotten further, but I have not had any time to work on writing a post up yet. I’ll get back on it in February.
Wikipedia admin fights back…
See the discussion page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:NASA_World_Wind
“but if you don’t have an opposing source we shouldn’t call World Wind free. As for the add-ons, we should only say they’re free if they all are”
When will people learn that Wikipedia deserves most to be ignored completely, just like bratty children who don’t mind their manners. The more we ponder on why Wikipedians are so psychotic, the more their idiocy wins and the stupider we all become. Isn’t it time for us smarter people to cut the cord and move on with our lives to focus on constructive things. Treat Wikipedia like your creepy pedophile uncle and hang up when he calls. The end.
Last summer, an alleged lead designer’s work was reverted, yes. But he didn’t explain that he was a lead designer.. and even when he finally did no one had any idea whether it was true or not. It’s kinda of foolish to blame us for that.
I could have gone on the NASA website and claim that I was at the very, very top, and that the truth had been so classified only myself and one other person had known it. Would that make it true? Unlikely.
Stop going off on rants when no one has any way to verify who you are.
I like “idiots” who comment on threads that are over 10 months old.
[...] Comment on NASA World Wind and Wikipedia by Open Source News …By Open Source News » Blog Archive » Comment…Comment on NASA World Wind and Wikipedia by LeftyBy LeftyI like “idiots” who comment on threads that are over 10 months old.Comments for James Fee GIS Blog – http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com […]Comments for James Fee GIS Blog – http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com [...]
You could have emailed Patrick Hogan who’semail address is on the World Wind page at NASA.
Dear NASA World Wind And Wikipedia ,
I owe internet for your details.
This mail is to introduce you to our website SBL – Sai BPO Services Limited.
We are a GIS service provider who provide solutions to all the GIS needs ranging from Image Geo-rectification / Geo-referencing Map / document and photogrammetric scanning GIS data entry / capture – graphical and textual Digitization/ Vectorization Feature Extraction GIS Mapping services for Environmental Studies, Urban/Local area Planning, Land Use Management, Protected Area Management, Water Modeling / Management, Agricultural Planning, Transportation Planning, Cadastral & Topographic mapping, Parcel & utility mapping and Census Mapping Map Production etc.
Please go through our website http://www.saibposervices.co.uk and I would highly appreciate if you will add our link to your website
http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2007/01/10/nasa-world-wind-and-wikipedia/
The category which matches the listing according to me is GIS
Waiting for your reply and a positive listing.
Regards from SBL GIS Team,
Praveen (Marketing GIS)
[...] Fee pointed me to a spam post on his blog.. and it is just too funny for words to [...]