Slashgeo

After a long and interesting discussion on the OSGeo mailing list, their wiki now partly summarize what's working and what's not working with the OSGeo after over 6 months of existence. Here's the first message of the long thread. From the not working side: "The main part of OSGeo that I think is not working as well as it could is communication. We have many mailing lists, which somewhat hide the real activity that is going on if you aren't following them every hour. There are committee conference calls as well. We also have a very active IRC channel which allows for awesome 1-on-1, real- time discussion, but it is also veiled somewhat from the public. Of course you can review IRC logs, follow many mailing lists and watch the wiki for changes, but we need some way to distill or amplify these great discussions in a manner that allows everyone to know, at a glance, what is going on. I have no real solution for this, but I'm sure we can hack something together."

Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo's Executive Director, announced the rather quiet first year anniversary of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. The interesting blog entry summarize what that year has been all about. From the entry's introduction: "February 4th, 2007 was the first anniversary of OSGeo. One year ago 25 people met face-to-face, and many more via phone and IRC, to discuss the possibility of starting an umbrella organisation. These participants represented over 13 different open source projects. The foundational purpose of the organisation was to help promote and continue to develop open source tools in the geospatial sphere. Since that time, much has happened and momentum around OSGeo continues to develop. Here are only a few highlights from that first year."

The FOSS4G 2007, the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2007 conference, has been in preparation for some time already. This year, it will be held in Victoria (BC) Canada. Paul Ramsey announced the Workshops and Labs program are now established. This conference is increasingly important in the geospatial community. The call for presentations ends in late June. From the main site: "The annual Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference brings together the people who create, use, and support open spatial software. No other event brings together members of the open source development, open data creation, and open standards promotion communities like FOSS4G. Find out more about FOSS4G." See this entry on the future of GITA vs FOSS4G conferences. See also related stories below for FOSS4G 2006 items.

chorner writes "This just in via Frank Warmerdam: 'OSGeo has selected sixteen students to participate in development efforts spread across the GDAL, GRASS, GeoTools, PostGIS, uDig, and GeoServer projects as part of the Google Summer of Code for 2007. Google is providing funding for the selected students, while the project communities are providing mentors to assist the students. A full list of students, mentors and planned developments is available at: http://code.google.com/soc/osgeo/about.html OSGeo thanks Google for it's support of this great program, and looks forward to the participation of these students in our community.'"

Tyler Mitchell writes "The first volume of the OSGeo Journal has now been released. This is a major milestone for spreading the word about open source geospatial applications in general and for helping build communication between projects and users involved with the OSGeo Foundation. The Journal provides news, event summaries, project introductions, case studies, topical articles and more. Volume 2 is currently under development. For more information see http://www.osgeo.org/journal or download the 71 page (15MB) Journal directly from: http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/final_pdfs/OSGe oJournal_vol1.pdf"

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation discussion mailing list offered some great insights on the OSGeo and its return on equity. From the original message by Howard Butler: "Open source software works because people acting in their own self interest have the auxiliary benefit of helping everyone in the project. Report your pet bug, file a patch, add a new feature -- all of these things immediately help you, but ultimately help the project. This activity also imparts tangential benefits that are very hard to quantify but can be clearly important like personal visibility, credibility, and status. For an open source software project to be viable as a development entity, it must be able to bestow these benefits to its individual contributors. Everyone's reasons may be different, but people must be able to receive a return on their sweat equity that they put in or volunteer effort will not continue to flow into a project. I think that recognition and facilitation of this symbiosis is a blind spot for OSGeo. We should be striving to ensure that it can take place because we are a volunteer organization whose members have common goals. [...] Most of OSGeo's measurable successes to date have been volunteer efforts, not primarily financially-backed ones." The whole thread is worth reading to understand the potential future of the OSGeo.

The OSGeo announced the availability of their second journal on open source geospatial solutions. You can download it here in pdf [10.8 Mb]. Here's a part of the table of content: "Project Spotlight: - MapWindow - GeoNetwork. Case Studies: - FAO GeoNetwork - Winnipeg Neighbourhood - Industrial Fishing." From the GeoNetwork article: "GeoNetwork "opensource" is a standardized and decentralized Geospatial Information Management System, based on the concept of distributed data and information ownership and is designed to enable access to geo-referenced data and cartographic products through descriptive metadata. Collections maintained at different organizations are accessible through a single entry point. This approach of geographic information management enhances easy and timely access to existing spatial data for a wide community of users, supporting informed decision- making in a variety of application fields." Also interesting is an article on geospatial topology basics.

A colleague sent me a link to a Linux Journal interview with Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo's executive director. From the interview: "When we talk about open source geospatial technology, we are usually talking about freedom to choose things such as -- target operating system, scripting or programming languages, target browsers, data formats required, analytical tools required, etc. Because applications can interact at several different levels, it is possible to build a stack of geospatial technology that uniquely meets your given requirements. This includes the common need to interoperate with proprietary platforms at a data or services level. By having these choices, a development team, integrator or user can choose to focus on future goals instead of ongoing limitations. Just because these are open source doesn't mean they are without limitations, but the possibility of overcoming the limitations is very real." See also related stories below and our OGGeo topic.

Spatially Adjusted links to an interesting discussion over the OSGeo-Discuss mailing list about open source careers and whether open source GIS software are up to par vs commercial GIS [Nabble link]. SA picks an insightful quote from Paul Ramsey, formerly of the Refractions fame: "My general synopsis: for server-side, for scriptability, for automation, for web-based, open source wins for most use cases, given a technically savvy user; for ad hoc, for cartographic production, for a user who is used to a point-n-click experience end to end, proprietary still wins."

Slashgeo regularly covers open source geospatial software. I copied some previous related stories below. With 52 North, the OSGeo and all the open source geospatial software such as the widely used GDAL, we can say open source geospatial software is in a healthy situation. Note that we also cover commercial geospatial software, including from ESRI. Editor's note: I usually read the OSGeo list myself and share interesting bits with our users, since I've been away from office, expect more thorough coverage after the summer. Meanwhile, there's always submissions.