[R-sig-Geo] To institutional users: heads up! PROJ 6+ is impacting your work!

[Roger Bivand]

I have received scant input (no input) on my warnings and requests for 
input on:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2019-November/027801.html

Please review that carefully, and in addition please take time now, that 
is best within one week (things are moving very fast), to review and 
comment on the PROJ list on the draft RFC 4:

https://github.com/rouault/PROJ/blob/rfc4_remote_and_geotiff_grid/docs/source/community/rfc/rfc-4.rst

(threads:)
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/proj/2019-November/009021.html
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/proj/2019-November/009024.html
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/proj/2019-November/009030.html

This concerns conditionally permitting PROJ (so here rgdal, sf and lwgeom) 
to download granular subsets of transformation grids behind the scenes to 
a user-writable directory, and then use these in coordinate 
transformation. The download would be from "the cloud", a content 
distribution network.

In practice, this would mean that platforms connected to the internet, and 
after approving access to the CDN, would start "grabbing" grid portions 
from the CDN and using these for transformation, rather than say using 
institutionally sanctioned grids. The CDN grids are expected to be best of 
breed going forward, protecting us forever from horizontal and vertical 
shifts and giving full geodetic accuracy wherever applied (and where 
national mapping agencies agree to publish their best grids).

It would be best if several list members at institutions with R-spatial 
workflow components or with relevant experience discuss this rapidly 
off-list (contact each other on list to volunteer if need be), respond to 
the PROJ list about the RFC draft before it is completed, and report back 
in this thread. Nobody will be able to help later if you sit on your hands 
now, now is when your needs can be protected for the next decade. For an 
individual academic like me to respond on your behalf would be most 
inadequate, as I can only speak from experience in individual research and 
teaching settings.

Please take action urgently, this is an opportunity to contribute to 
shaping critical shared infrastructure with ramifications way beyond 
R-spatial. Please also offer me the comfort (offlist) of knowing that you 
are going to respond to the PROJ list request for comments on the RFC 
draft, it feels very lonely here trying to guess what your needs are.

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en