This is awesome! I'm a env.sci student who's worked mostly with Landsat so far in a few remote sensing classes, but this post was super interesting to learn about the satellite imagery world beyond that.
Great read. Licenses that stop you comparing against other data are particularly insane! (Is that even legally enforceable?)
> A good place to start is a well-known portal that is free, open, easy to use, and provides a robust inventory of all the data and sources available for any location.
>
> (This does not exist.)
A general data sharing network that can also handle satellite data would be great wouldn't it? I think my proposal+ STAC could probably handle this case? The hardest part is the ridiculous licensing...
Fantastic, spot on article. "Frustratingly, most of these ended up with “CONTACT SALES.” Even more frustratingly, most of the sales departments did not contact me." --> I heard this *all the time* from scientists who would use the "Contact Sales" form on Planet's website when I worked there.
Since I only worked with scientists I'm not sure what the commercial licenses for Planet data are like, but I can say they did make very open licenses for non-commercial research use. You can publish derived products, publish benchmarking papers, etc.; the only ask was to include an attribution to Planet in the image credits and a certain citation in the bibliography. And guess what? Those generous licenses have led to 20,000+ people using the data, over 3,500 scientific publications, led directly to the development of Planet's Fusion data product, gave ample fodder for marketing content, and generated millions in revenue.
Oh, and the gateway into that for most of those users was a *free program* for anyone affiliated with a university. No standard pack of sample data---researchers could download data over their specific area of interest to see if it was useful for their work. If you needed more data than the free program allowed for, then there were paid license options at rates universities could actually afford, or larger government-funded programs like the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) or ESA Earthnet where those agencies pay commercial data providers on behalf of the research community.
I feel like there are a lot of lessons learned here that could be applied to your more standard commercial customers.
This is awesome! I'm a env.sci student who's worked mostly with Landsat so far in a few remote sensing classes, but this post was super interesting to learn about the satellite imagery world beyond that.
Great read. Licenses that stop you comparing against other data are particularly insane! (Is that even legally enforceable?)
> A good place to start is a well-known portal that is free, open, easy to use, and provides a robust inventory of all the data and sources available for any location.
>
> (This does not exist.)
A general data sharing network that can also handle satellite data would be great wouldn't it? I think my proposal+ STAC could probably handle this case? The hardest part is the ridiculous licensing...
https://hackmd.io/@TomNicholas/H1KzoYrPJe
Fantastic, spot on article. "Frustratingly, most of these ended up with “CONTACT SALES.” Even more frustratingly, most of the sales departments did not contact me." --> I heard this *all the time* from scientists who would use the "Contact Sales" form on Planet's website when I worked there.
Since I only worked with scientists I'm not sure what the commercial licenses for Planet data are like, but I can say they did make very open licenses for non-commercial research use. You can publish derived products, publish benchmarking papers, etc.; the only ask was to include an attribution to Planet in the image credits and a certain citation in the bibliography. And guess what? Those generous licenses have led to 20,000+ people using the data, over 3,500 scientific publications, led directly to the development of Planet's Fusion data product, gave ample fodder for marketing content, and generated millions in revenue.
Oh, and the gateway into that for most of those users was a *free program* for anyone affiliated with a university. No standard pack of sample data---researchers could download data over their specific area of interest to see if it was useful for their work. If you needed more data than the free program allowed for, then there were paid license options at rates universities could actually afford, or larger government-funded programs like the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) or ESA Earthnet where those agencies pay commercial data providers on behalf of the research community.
I feel like there are a lot of lessons learned here that could be applied to your more standard commercial customers.