You are not correct in your statement about "the rapidlasso guy". He does not speak of the evils of "closed source". He speaks of the evils of "closed formats" especially when forced down the throat of a community by the mere market dominance of a company. Prior to the "LAZ clone" fiasco he was quite friendly with Esri as he is with many other closed source companies. What business model Esri uses to operate in the software business was never his beef with them. But Esri using their dominant role to push a closed LiDAR format and thereby making it impossible for other software to directly exploit this #LiDAR data, that is what he and others were critiquing. He writes both open and closed source software. As long as the formats are open both business models can live side by side in harmony. Below an image and a quote from ESRI’s ArcNews Spring 2011 news letter about the importance of open formats, standards, and specifications. This is discussed in more detail in this blog post. “Esri continues to advocate the need for open access to geographic data and functionality through support for widely adopted and practical standards and specifications. Esri follows an open system strategy for accessing and using geographic data and functionality.” — ArcNews, Spring 2011
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