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FOSS4G 2007 Wrap-Up

posted by Satri on Tuesday October 02, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly   Email story  Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the avalanche-has-started-and-it's-too-late-for-the-peebles-to-vote dept.
New Event Open Source Community OSGeo
Still recovering from my recent accident I was not able to provide a timely coverage of last week's Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics (FOSS4G) 2007 conference in Victoria. With open source geospatial software being widely used nowadays, even by behemoths such as Google, Autodesk and ESRI, this conference is doubtlessly important. Here's a wrap up of the most interesting entries on the event that I could find, see also the previous related stories below. Let's start with the official program and OSGeo's Tyler Mitchell and Autodesk's Geoff Zeiss preemptive notes. If you have only time for one wrap up to read, here's Peter Batty's extensive review of FOSS4G 2007. From this entry: "The quality of the sessions I went to was consistently high, and there was a real energy and buzz around the whole event (much more than at most of the more established geospatial conferences I have been to recently). Adena Schutzberg said in her closing comments that her overall impression of the conference and the open source geospatial community was one of maturity [...]. The event reaffirmed the belief I had before coming here that the role of open source software in the geospatial industry will continue to grow quickly." All Points Blog offers an excellent coverage of the whole event, here's their entries: on the opening/lightning talks, tidbits I, tidbits II and exhibit highlights. Other entries include GeoServer news and tutorials, a short entry on an OpenLayers talk, Autodesk's announcement of code donation (covered last week), Andrew Turner's Beyond GPS slides, Archaeogeek one, two and three interesting accounts of the event. Update: 10/03 19:24 GMT by S : OSGeo's Tyler Mitchell just provided it's own overview of FOSS4G's success.

Related Stories

Industry: FOSS4G 2006 Conference - A Great Success [+]
Tyler Mitchell writes "FOSS4G 2006 Conference — A Great Success. 5 October 2006. The energy and enthusiasm of the Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics (FOSS4G) Conference continues to grow. This year over 500 attendees made their way to Lausanne, Switzerland from September 12-15th to participate in this annual international event. The conference began with a day and a half of more than 25 hands-on workshops. They covered web mapping, desktop applications, 3D visualization, and much more. As in years past, these workshops were completely sold-out due to their popularity." Read more below for the rest of the press release.
Industry: FOSS4G 2007 - Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2007 1 comment [+]
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.
Interview: Paul Ramsey and Tyler Mitchell on FOSS4G 2007 [+]
Directions Magazine has an interesting interview with Paul Ramsey of Refractions Research and Tyler Mitchell of OSGeo on the upcoming Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Victoria, British Columbia. In addition to some of the highlights coming at FOSS4G, they provide an overview of some general trends in the development and adoption of open source geospatial technologies.
Industry: Safe Software to Demonstrate at FOSS4G [+]
Safe Software writes "Safe Software to Demonstrate Technology for Data Exchange between Proprietary and Open Source Platforms at FOSS4G Excerpt from press release: Safe Software, the recognized leader in providing spatial ETL (extract, transform and load) tools for translating and transforming spatial data, today announced that the company is sponsoring and presenting at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Victoria, BC, from September 24-27. Conference attendees will have several opportunities to learn how the company's FME platform can play an important role in improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of geospatial systems by serving as a bridge for exchanging data between open source and proprietary software. For more details, visit www.safe.com."
Industry: Mapbender FOSS4G Workshop W-03 and 2.4.3 rc1 Released [+]
Seven writes "From MapbenderWiki: The Mapbender Project is happy to announce the new release 2.4.3 with some minor changes and all bug fixes since the last version. Change in Release Management: More importantly this is the first release that comes in a regular time cycle and not after a certain set of features have been added. This change in policy has been discussed at length on the Mapbender mailing list and on IRC. It reflects a further maturation of the software and aims at making regular updates to the newest version a lesser issue for users and portal operators. The next release with major changes is due in December 2007, the challenge being whether the Project will keep up with the goal of regular release cycles. Full Adoption of Trac: After more than a half year of testing, discussion and trial phase all enhancements and bug fixes are now managed via the OSGeo operated Trac instance. Trac is now also used to manage road map and further development. Keep it Human(e and) Readable: The human readable version continues to be available through the Wiki as a MediaWiki template page that ties into the full Version History of Mapbender. Online Training Course: In time for FOSS4G 2007 a full fledged Online Training Course (Mapbender 101) is made available through OSGeo's Education infrastructure Moodle (currently still on the OSGeo Test Server. It will receive its baptism of fire (editors: feel free to amend to something less pompous...) during the FOSS4G Mapbender Workshop. "
Industry: LinuxJournal's Interview With Tyler Mitchell of OSGeo 1 comment [+]
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.
Technology: Minerva Open Source GIS 1 comment [+]
Kurt's weblog made me aware the open source GIS project named Minerva, not yet mentioned here before. Here's the Minerva presentation done at the FOSS4G 2007 event. As the presentation show, Minerva can display geodata in 3D over 7 large boards. From the summary: "Minerva's primary strength is the ability to display raster and vector data together from multiple sources with the benefit of high-performance computer graphics (including animating through temporal data sets). By using robust open source toolkits like OSSIMPlanet, we are able to manage gigabytes worth of terrain and image layers. Minerva is an open-source project under active development at Arizona State University's Decision Theater and is used in our production facility to support policy decision-making meetings for our customers. Projects completed with Minerva vary from school enrollment to disease propagation studies." In addition to OSSIM, Minerva uses PostGIS and OpenSceneGraph.
Industry: OSGeo Journal Volume 3 Available [+]
The OSGeo mailing list announced the availability of the OGGeo journal volume 3 which concentrates on the FOSS4G proceedings. The contents: "Editorial & Index (PDF - 0.6 MB), Integration & Development: Portable GIS: GIS on a USB Stick(PDF - 0.8 MB), Automatic Generation of Web-Based GIS/Database Applications (PDF - 0.9 MB), db4o2D - Object Database Extension for 2D Geospatial Types (PDF - 0.3 MB), Google Summer of Code for Geoinformatics (PDF - 0.3 MB) Topical Interest: A Generic Approach to Manage Metadata Standards (PDF - 1.6 MB), Towards Web Services Dedicated to Thematic Mapping (PDF - 0.4 MB), Interoperability for 3D Geodata: Experiences with CityGML and OGC Web Services (PDF - 0.8 MB), A Model-Driven Web Feature Service for Enhanced Semantic Interoperability (PDF - 0.7 MB), Spatial-Yap: A Spatio-Deductive Database System (PDF - 1.5 MB), Case Studies: The DIVERT Project: Development of Inter-Vehicular Reliable Telematics (PDF - 1.8 MB), GRASS GIS and Modelling of Natural Hazards (PDF - 2.5 MB), A Spatial Database to Integrate Information of the Rondonia Natural Resource Management Project (PDF - 0.4 MB), GeoSIPAM: Free and Open Source Software Applied to the Protection of the Brazilian Amazon (PDF - 1 MB), The Amazon Deforestation Monitoring System (PDF - 0.7 MB)" A few related previous stories linked below.
Industry: FOSS4G 2008 Announcement [+]
The FOSS4G2008 Conference will be held from September 29, 2008 through October 3, 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa.

From the FOSS4G2008 Home Page: "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.

The 2008 FOSS4G Conference will be held in the fascinating and beautiful city of Cape Town , South Africa from the Monday 29th September to Friday 3rd October at the Cape Town International Convention Centre"

Foss4G2008 Home Page

Industry: GeoServer 1.5.4 Released [+]
st_0x0ef writes "From GeoServer Blog: The GeoServer team is pleased to announce the availability of the latest stable release, 1.5.4. This bugfix release provides a bunch of KML and templates related fixes, support for Arabic labeling, propper Google projection
support, validating GML 2.1.2.1 schemas, and a lot more. Also to note, this is the release that finally is able to be deployed on Oracle Application Server. Full changelog is located here. This release is based off the brand new GeoTools 2.3.5 stable release."
Technology: Announcing the Release of Quantum GIS 0.9.0 1 comment [+]
timlinux writes "It is our great pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Quantum GIS (QGIS) Version 0.9.0. Quantum GIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS lets you browse and create map data on your computer. It supports many common spatial data formats (e.g. ESRI ShapeFile, geotiff). QGIS supports plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost (download here). We welcome contributions from our user community in the form of code contributions, bug fixes, bug reports, contributed documentation, advocacy and supporting other users on our mailing lists and forums. Financial contributions are also welcome. This release introduces several new features including python bindings and many additional GRASS modules. The release also includes bug fixes and stability improvements. QGIS is available is source form, and as binary executables for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. All versions can be obtained from our download page. As an open source project, we provide support for using QGIS via our mailing lists and bug tracker:
  • For general enquiries subscribe to our users mailing list.
  • For developer related enquiries subscribe to our separate developers list.
  • If you think you have found a bug, please report it using our bug tracker. When reporting bugs, please include some contact information in case we need help with replicating your issue.
" This is really great news. Here's a few links from the official Quantum GIS blog that I kept waiting for this day: a link to the workbook named "Shuffling Quantum GIS into the Open Source Software Stack", the slides from the FOSS4G 2007 presentation named "Quantum GIS - Five Years and Counting" and here's a screencast for loading data into GRASS with QGIS. See also related stories below.
Industry: OpenLayers 2.5 Released [+]
The official OpenLayers blog informs us OpenLayers 2.5 has been released. From the blog: "As of this final release, the OpenLayers 2.5 release closes 190 outstanding tickets, more than any other OpenLayers release to date! [...] Now on to new features! SLD, client side reprojection, improved documentation and examples, tile transitions… so many neat things that 2.6 will hopefully bring." See this previous post on what's new in OpenLayers 2.5. The Earth is Square adds a post on OpenLayers working on the iPod Touch. See related stories below, OpenLayers has been covered regularly.
FOSS4G: Autodesk Announces Projection Technology Contribution to Open Source 1 comment [+]
From the morning plenary sessions of FOSS4G2007: Geoff Zeiss, Director of Technology for Autodesk announced that it will donate its coordinate system and map projection technology. From the official NR: "The software, acquired from Mentor Software and its founder Norm Olsen, will help users to more easily support geographic coordinate conversions and allow accurate and precise geospatial analysis. The announcement was made today at the annual Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where geospatial open source developers and users join to learn, present and network."
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