[fitsbits] results of IAUFWG vote on compression

[Lucio Chiappetti]

As you might remember the proposal to include FITS compression was 
approved at majority last February. The presence of some NO-votes (see 
excerpt below) forced a three-month delay.

Having this expired, FITS compression is now validly part of the FITS 
standard.

http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Conventions/compression-fin2.pdf
contains the entire text of section 10 with the current pagination

Note that the standard is *identical* in all technical details to what 
approved in February, as it is most of the text. The only addition is a 
short disclaimer sentence, which can be found across the two pages of
this excerpt (if one does not want to retrieve the entire section)
http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Conventions/compression-disc.pdf


Some of us felt redundant to include a disclaimer, since it has always 
been assumed that a generic FITS reader has no obligations to implement 
all FITS features. However, given the complexity of some of the 
compression algorithms, some other of us felt appropriate to include a 
specific disclaimer.

- mantainers of large archives may freely use compression to store (and
   distribute) their data

- simple users or writers of homegrown FITS readers are not compelled
   to implement compression/decompression but may use existing utilities
   like fpack/funpack to deal with them


We are considering the possibility to register a specific MIME type for 
compressed FITS files, but even if we decide to proceed that will take
a while


On Fri, 26 Feb 2016, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:

> The IAUFWG vote about FITS image compression and FITS table compression has 
> terminated with the following results:

>                Yes  No  Abstain
>                ---  --  -------
> Question 1:   16   3   1
> Question 2:   15   3   2
>
> Therefore according to the IAUWFG voting rules the proposals are approved, 
> but the 'No' votes force a mandatory 3-month delay (until 25 May 2016) before 
> the vote can be considered final.


-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)