shrug-l: FW: [OSGeo-Announce] Open Source Geospatial Foundation Created to Strengthen Collaborative Development of Open Geospatial Technologies

[Gary Watry]

______________________________________________________________

Gary L. Watry


GIS Coordinator
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
FSU / COAPS
Johnson Building, RM 215
2035 East Paul Dirac Drive
Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2840

 

E-Mail: watry at coaps.fsu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Neteler [mailto:neteler at itc.it] 
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 1:25 PM
To: OSGeo-announce; OSGeo-discuss
Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Open Source Geospatial Foundation Created to
Strengthen Collaborative Development of Open Geospatial Technologies

 

Press release


Open Source Geospatial Foundation Created to Strengthen Collaborative
Development of Open Geospatial Technologies


OSGEO to provide an umbrella for community-led GIS and mapping projects

March 06, 2006 - The open source geospatial community today announced the
formation of the Open Source Geospatial <http://www.osgeo.org>  Foundation,
a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the
collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The
foundation was formed in February to provide financial, organizational and
legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It will also
serve as an independent legal entity to which community members can
contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that
their contributions will be maintained for public benefit.

On February 4th, OSGEO held its first meeting in Chicago with 25
participants representing 18 groups and over 20 different open source
geospatial projects, and 39 other parties participating via Internet Relay
Chat. At this meeting, the participants took important steps in forming and
organizing a foundation to develop and support open source geospatial
technologies, including defining the foundation's name, structure and
vision. The consensus reached at the Chicago meeting paves the way to
establish a productive, inclusive foundation.

The Chicago meeting also resulted in the appointment of an initial board of
directors that will be responsible for the drafting and execution of the
foundation's charter and bylaws. The initial five directors come from North
America and Europe and represent various open source projects and
technologies. The initial five directors of OSGEO are:

*	Arnulf Christl - Mapbender <http://www.mapbender.org> , CCGIS,
Germany;
*	Chris Holmes - GeoServer <http://www.geoserver.org/> /GeoTools
<http://www.geotools.org/> , The Open Planning Project, U.S.;
*	Gary Lang - MapGuide <http://mapguide.osgeo.org/> , Autodesk, U.S.;
*	Markus Neteler - GRASS <http://grass.itc.it/> , Istituto Trentino Di
Cultura, Italy;
*	Frank Warmerdam - GDAL/OGR <http://www.gdal.org/> , Canada.

The foundation expects to appoint four additional directors within the next
several weeks to serve as the full interim board until the next annual
meeting of the foundation membership at FOSS4G <http://www.foss4g2006.org/>
this fall.

OSGEO draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the Apache
Foundation <http://www.apache.org/> , including a membership composed of
individuals drawn from foundation projects who are selected for membership
status based on their active contribution to foundation projects and
governance. The initial membership consists of the five initial board
members plus 16 other participants who attended the Chicago organizational
meeting. The foundation added recently further 24 members from the broader
open source geospatial community through a public nomination and election
process to reach 45 voting members.

Initial OSGEO projects are GeoTools <http://www.geotools.org/> , Mapbender
<http://www.mapbender.org> , MapBuilder <http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net/>
, MapGuide <http://mapguide.osgeo.org/> , MapServer
<http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/> , GDAL/OGR <http://www.gdal.org/> , GRASS
<http://grass.itc.it/> , and OSSIM <http://www.ossim.org/> .

The foundation will not require that OSGEO software projects to be licensed
under any one particular open source license, but will require that all
OSGEO software be released under an open source license approved by the Open
Source Initiative (OSI) <http://www.opensource.org> . The long term goal is
to encourage licenses that allow the different foundation projects to work
better together and permit for code exchange among them. The foundation will
implement contribution and intellectual property policies designed to avoid
the inclusion of proprietary or patented code in OSGEO projects. Foundation
projects are focused on interoperability - both with one another at the
library level, and with other proprietary and open source projects through
the use of open standards. 

The foundation will also be pursuing goals beyond software development, such
as promoting more open access to government produced spatial data, which is
a major problem outside of North America. 

About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation <http://www.osgeo.org>  (OSGEO), is a
not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the
collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The
foundation was formed to provide financial, organizational and legal support
to the broader open source geospatial community. It will also serve as an
independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code,
funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their
contributions will be maintained for public benefit.

For more information, write to info at osgeo.org and see http://www.osgeo.org/



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