OSGeo News

The OSGeo board has formally approved three new local chapters. OSGeo local chapters provide a venue to support local users and developers, as well as a mechanism to further OSGeo's mission and goals in a linguistic, or geographic area.

FOSSGIS e.V. has been approved as a local chapter for the german speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland with Dr. Georg Lösel as representative. FOSSGIS e.V. has existed since the year 2000 at which time is was incorporated as GRASS-Anwender-Vereinigung (GAV). It was recently renamed FOSSGIS e.V. FOSSGIS e.V is responsible for maintaining the FreeGIS Portal. Since 2006 it has held the FOSSGIS conference promoting FOSS4G software, with 500 participants in 2008. FOSSGIS e.V. also plays an important role in supporting a FOSS4G role in other tradeshows such as InterGeo and AGIT.

http://www.fossgis.de

The OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter has been approved for spanish speaking areas of all continents with Pedro-Juan Ferrer Matoses as representative. Since it's formation in 2007 the chapter has established a members list, and elected a board of directors. Key activities include work on the Free GIS Book, Spanish Localization and events including Jornadas de SIG Libre and the Jornadas gvSIG.

http://es.osgeo.org

The Comité de direction du Chapitre québécois de l'OSGeo has been approved for the region of Québec (Canada) with Daniel Morissette as representative. This chapter seeks to provide a channel for communication, exchange and cooperation to facilitate the development of the Québec community around OSGeo products and Open Source Geospatial topics in general. With a primary focus on local community development, it also plans to cooperate with the Francophone Chapter on French translations, and with other nearby chapters on some events. The chapter has approximately 90 members, and has formed a steering committee.

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Chapitre_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois

The GeoTools 2.5 release is available for download:

• http://geotools.codehaus.org/2.5.0

The 2.5.0 release marks the first stable release of a number of exciting developments and features of the 2.5.x series including:

• New feature model based on GeoAPI
• Java 5
• Support for units based on JSR-275

And much more. The entire change log can be found in Jira.

Other exciting news for the GeoTools community includes graduation from incubation as a project The OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation).

Special thanks to everyone who provided feedback and filed bugs for this release. As usual a big thanks to Geomatys, GeoSolutions, Refractions Research, and OpenGeo, and most importantly the user and contributor community for continuing to drive GeoTools and make the project a success.

For more information about this release and about the GeoTools project in general please visit:

• http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTDOC
• http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/2.5.x
• http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Upgrade+to+2.5
• http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS

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The GeoTools Community

During the closing plenary of the FOSS4G 2008 conference, Paul Ramsey was honored with the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) for 2008. Paul has played a leadership role in the PostGIS, GEOS and uDig projects. He has also played an important advocacy role for Open Source in the geospatial field with the government and business communities. The PostGIS project (a spatial extension to PostgreSQL) is the leading open source spatial database solution and has contributed greatly to the understanding that FOSS4G is "enterprise ready". Paul also lead the very successful FOSS4G 2007 conference in Victoria, and is now a director of OSGeo. Paul's video acceptance is available at:

http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo/conf/2008/ramsey-katz.mov

Background

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities. In the early 80's, Sol assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System). This software was arguably the first open source GIS software in the world. Sol would later go on to release and maintain PC MOSS. He was also one of the first involved in public data translator utilities. Utilities that he developed for converting DEMs and reading SDTS files were contributed back to the geospatial community, and are still available today. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM is still available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/. Sadly, after fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for almost a decade, Sol died April 23, 1999 in bed. His legacy will always live on in the GFOSS world.

The OpenLayers Development Team is proud to announce release of OpenLayers 2.7.

As always, the source is available at http://openlayers.org/download/.

This release features a number of major developments, including:

• Vector-Behavior: Strategies, Protocols, Filters
• Improved Vector rendering for better performance
• Canvas rendering class
• Z-Ordering and Y-Ordering for Vector layers
• New Basic Measurement Control
• New OpenLayers.Request interface for AJAX
• Smarter Popups

... and tons of other new features and bug fixes that you can see detailed here:
http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.7/Notes

Furthermore, we are proud to announce two new additions to the AddIns directory! Yes, it is an exciting day for everyone in the OpenLayers Community. Please take the time to check out:

• Bookmark Control -- Allows user a simple way to 'bookmark' locations on the map and navigate to them. (Author: hpbrantley, URL: http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Addins/Bookmark)
• Loading Panel -- Provides a convenient and sexy animated status monitor so users know their layers are loading (Author: bartvde, URL: http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Addins/LoadingPanel)

We even have a nice new UML Diagram to help people out with understanding the new classes in 2.7 and their relationships. Thanks Emanuel!
http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/UML

A thank you again to all the people who helped to make this release happen.

Regards,

The OpenLayers Team

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, today released a request for proposal, or RFP, (available at http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp) for the hosting of the FOSS4G 2010 conference. Only days away from the exciting FOSS4G 2008 event in Cape Town South Africa (http://www.foss4g2008.org/), and with preparations well underway for FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney Australia, OSGeo again aims for the 2010 conference to be a major geospatial conference during that year. The RFP solicitation closes December 1st, 2008.

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OSGeo Conference Committee

Contact: Tyler Mitchell, Executive Director, OSGeo Email: tmitchell@osgeo.org

Williams Lake, BC, Canada, September 18, 2008 - The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) recently added two new directors to its board and updated its officer positions, including a new President.

New President

The OSGeo Board of Directors selected Arnulf Christl as its new President. Mr. Christl brings years of experience in the geospatial industry, including a strong perspective on the use of free and open source software within a business context through his company WhereGroup in Bonn, Germany. He has served on OSGeo's Board from its inception and been involved in several aspects from Marketing to Web management as well as in leading the Mapbender web mapping project. He is committed to seeing OSGeo continue its global advocacy efforts to help organizations continue to adopt free and open source solutions across all domains.

He explains, "I'm pleased to be able to help in my new role as OSGeo President. I have three main goals on my personal agenda. First, further support for emerging local chapters, encouraging them to develop meetings/conferences that complement our global FOSS4G effort. Second, improve our support for businesses using and supporting Open Source Geospatial software. Our organization is now so strong and healthy that we need to tell the world about it in the press and at conferences. Third, and most challenging, bridging the extremes of proprietary businesses and thorough grassroots volunteerism. If it is possible, then OSGeo is the organization capable of bridging this gap."

New Treasurer

After two years in the position, Frank Warmerdam stepped down as President to focus on others aspects of the organization and to make space for new ideas and vision in the leadership role. He was chosen as the new Treasurer of OSGeo, taking over from Dave McIlhagga who held the position previously.

Mr. Warmerdam describes the change, "I really enjoyed being President and am thrilled with the progress we've made. Arnulf's enthusiasm and experience make him a ideal President. I have been interested in helping more on the financial management side of the organisation, so it's great to be able to do so in the official role as Treasurer."

As a leader of the GDAL/OGR Project, Mr. Warmerdam has been closely tied to the finances of OSGeo, collecting over $30,000 (USD) in sponsorships for that project. He will help to streamline financial processes and oversee financial reporting, while working alongside the current Finance Committee.

New Board

In July, 2008, elections for 4 (out of 9) Board of Director positions were completed. The results saw two new directors join and two others re-elected to previously expired positions. The new board consists of:

• Robert (Bob) Bray (USA)
• Howard Butler (USA) - New director
• Arnulf Christl (Germany) - Re-elected
• Ari Jolma (Finland) - New director
• Markus Neteler (Italy)
• Paul Ramsey (Canada)
• Jeroen Ticheler (The Netherlands)
• Jo Walsh (Spain)
• Frank Warmerdam (Canada) - Re-elected

About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or 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 provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves 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.

OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The Foundation's projects are all freely available and useable under an OSI-certified open source license.