Slashgeo

The PerryGeo blog ask an interesting question about comparing FDO, GDAL/OGR and FME. From the blog: " FDO, GDAL and FME all seem to operate in roughly the same domain - Providing a data model, API and tools to translate between spatial data formats. Does anyone know of any good write-ups comparing/contrasting the features of these three libraries?" Read the very informative answers on the blog. See also related stories below.

The OSGeo mailing list announced that GEOS is entering OSGeo incubation process. What is GEOS? "GEOS (Geometry Engine - Open Source) is a C++ port of the Java Topology Suite" Ok, what is the Java Topology Suite? "The JTS Topology Suite (JTS) is an API providing spatial object model and fundamental geometric functions. It implements the geometry model defined in the OpenGIS Consortium Simple Features Specification for SQL. Functions provided include: * spatial predicates (based on the DE-9IM model), * overlay functions (intersection, difference, union, symmetric difference), * buffer, * convex hull, * area and distance functions, and * topological validity checking"

The OSGeo mailing list tells us the OpenLayers project graduated from the OSGeo incubation process: "Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project." Here's the OpenLayers website, see also related stories below.

The powerful open source GRASS GIS team has just released version 6.2.3: "This release fixes a number of bugs discovered in the 6.2.2 source code. It is primarily for stability purposes and adds minimal new features. Besides bug fixes it also includes a number of new message translations and updates for the help pages. Highlights include further maturation of the GRASS 6 GUI, vector, and database code. Some improvements have been backported from the GRASS 6.3 development branch where new development continues at a strong pace of approximately one code commit every hour, including major work on an all new cross-platform wxPython GUI and a native MS Windows port." Below I copied a few related previous stories.

The OSGeo-Announce mailing list informs us the open source GDAL/OGR 1.5.0 has been released. Considering the almost ubiquitous use of GDAL in open source and proprietary software, this is doubtlessly great news, especially with the numerous new drivers included for 1.5.0. Mateusz Loskot provides a few statistics: "more than 420 tickets closed on the Trac, implemented 17 new GDAL drivers for raster formats, and 4 new OGR drivers for vectors, implemented 4 (5 counting RFC 16) RFC documents, added 5 new command line utilities, plus, big number of features and improvements in SWIG bindings for scripting languages." In related news, Proj.4 4.6.0 has also been released.

moovida writes "Since many asked for it, the JGrass team finally releases a prealpha JGrass package. This is the first touchable result of a long time of heavy development to migrate the old JGrass functionalities into the new udig framework. Also the new website and trackers, based on the Savane engine, are on their first run at the Free Software Center. If this release has been possible, then only throught the great uDig community that accepted us and gave us every needed help. Hat off to Refractions and its developers. Welcome to the new JGrass prealpha, the leap year edition!!" JGrass is "[...] a free, multi platform, open source GIS based on the famous GIS Grass [...]" See also previous stories below.

The OSGeo-Announce mailing list informs us FDO 3.3.0 has been released. From the announcement: "Highlights among the new features of FDO 3.3.0 include: - SQL Server Spatial 2008 support, - Addition of an FDO provider for PostGIS, - Added FDO Expression Engine support, - Enhanced WMS image format support for png, tiff, jpeg, and gif image types, - Improved FDO Schema Manager support for database views" FDO has been mentioned a few times before, see related stories below, including a comparison of FDO, GDAL and FME.

Mateusz Loskot announced on his blog the release of GDAL 1.5.1. From his blog : "The March 20th, 2008 brought us new patch release of GDAL library. It doesn’t include any new features but a very tidy set of 65 bug fixes. Great Job GDAL Team!"

Head on over there for more information or the links to snag the new GDAL release.