At the GITA conference, Mark Doherty of Intergraph raised an interesting point in his presentation. He compared commonly accepted standards as proposed for the OGC, for example, versus "defacto" or perhaps more commonly "used" standards that may be neither "open" (in the current vernacular) nor a true standard. His examples recognized WMS and WFS as an example of common specifications. While the analogy is not quite accurate, his "defacto" standard was the use of Oracle Spatial as a platform more commonly chosen to manage spatial data. You might think of KML as another "defacto" standard for sharing data on the Google platforms.
It raises an interesting point of whether some standards or specifications are too fleeting; here today but fade when the market determines something different. And how does someone with the responsiblity of developing an enterprise architecture decide.
And if you haven't heard about it, the USGS has put all 55,000 USGS quad maps online (USGS Store) for free download in GeoPDF format.
Tom Murphy, keynote speaker at this year's GITA Conference and former mayor of Pittsburgh confronted a question from the audience at the opening plenary session on how China was funding all of its infrastructure development.
"Look at the back of your shirt," was his retort. Murphy indicated that China was flush with cash right now and their infrastructure projects prove it. He cited as evidence: