Category Archives: Volume 11

Volume 11: Table of Contents

Volume 11: Brief News and Events Announcements from the OSGeo Community

To keep abreast of OSGeo news, watch the OSGeo news page, or subscribe
to its RSS feed. This report includes highlights from recent months,
plus items specifically sent to the News Editor.

OSGeo Governance Elections

Over the last several months elections have been held for both OSGEO
Charter Membership and the Board of Directors. The current slate of
Charter Members now numbers 144, located around the world. Five board
members were elected for two year terms: Anne Ghisla (Italy),
Jeff McKenna (Canada), Daniel Morissette (Canada), Cameron Shorter
(Australia), and Frank Warmerdam (Canada). Jo Cook had to step down
from her position immediately prior to the elections, and Jáchym Cepický
(Czech Republic) will serve for an interim one year term to fill the
vacancy. The new board has chosen Frank Warmerdam to serve as President,
Daniel Morissette to serve as Treasurer, and Michael Gerlek to serve
as Secretary. Congratulations and thanks to all the new and returning
Charter Members and Board Members.

Conferences and Meetings

FOSS4G Beijing 2012: Unfortunately, our international meeting in
Beijing was cancelled, despite great efforts to get it in place.
FOSS4G events have always depended highly on local volunteers to do
most of the organization, and while there have been fantastic successes,
the model has inherent risk. The OSGEO Board of Directors is
investigating models to mitigate these risks for future meetings.
Work is already well underway for FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham, and multiple
regional events have also become increasingly important and popular parallel
initiatives. As an indicator of FOSS4G/OSGeo content at “other” GIS events,
one can track the distribution of the OSGEO Live DVD, which is documented
at the OSGeo Live History Wiki Page.

FOSS4G Regional Events – A Sampler

We’ve seen a plethora of regional events using FOSS4G moniker in the
past few months. This is an example of the growth in regional events
mentioned above. The first ever North American FOSS4G regional meeting
(FOSS4G-NA) took place from the 10th to the 12th of April, 2012, in Washington,
DC, and attracted over 350 attendees, and 50 speakers. That event was followed up by FOSS4G-CEE & Geoinformatics, in Prague, May 21-23, and again slides from the meeting
can be found at the conference web site. Also in Europe, June 28 was
“OSGeo.nl Day” in Velp, the Netherlands, and on the 5th of September,
Nottingham UK hosted an Open Source GIS Conference. Meetings in Asia
included FOSS4G Hokkaido 2012 and FOSS4G Southeast Asia (July 18-19 in Malaysia),
and soon we’ll see FOSS4G Korea in Seoul, on October 12, and FOSS4G
India, October 25-26.

Collaboration

Several new agreements between OSGeo and other industry or academic
associations have been announced in the past year. Most recently,
the existing agreement between the International Cartographic Association
(ICA) and OSGeo has enabled the creation of Open Source Geospatial Labs in
South America and Africa, at the Federal University of Parana in Brazil,
and at the Centre for Geoinformation Science at the University of Pretoria
in South Africa. These initiatives join Open Geospatial labs in Europe,
aiming to spread the advantages of geospatial technology to as many
as possible.

Project News

GeoMOOSE 2.6 Released: On June 19th, GeoMOOSE 2.6 was released, with
updates to the included OpenLayers version, Dogo javascript library,
website and documentation, and new flexibility for customizing settings.
GeoMOOSE is a web application framework that enables non-developers to
create web-mapping applications using familiar tools and simple configuration.

OpenLayers 2.12 Released: OpenLayers 2.12 made its debut on June 27th,
offering a new CSS-customizable zoom control, easier configuration of map
projections, tile caching to enable offline use, CSS-based tile animation,
support for UTFGrid, tile queuing, and fractional zooming for tiled layers.
More details can be found at GitHub.

GeoTools 8.0 Released: The GeoTools community announced a new major
release on August 7th, with many new features. The highlights include
an update to Java 6, SQL joins using the WFS protocol, temporal filters,
builds using Maven 2 / 3, and a new Sphinx-generated user guide with live
code examples, tutorials and build instructions. More details can be
found at the GeoTools web page.

OSGeo-Live 6.0 Released: The latest version of the OSGeo-Live
Xubuntu-based bootable DVD/flash drive/Virtual machine was completed
in late August, and officially released just days ago at the Open Source
GIS conference in Nottingham, UK. The disc/image includes demos,
installers and datasets of a wide range of open source geospatial software,
including 50 preconfigured geospatial applications, with overviews and
quick start guides for each of them, and a collection of free spatial data.
In addition to updating all the included software, a major accomplishment
in this release was to move all the Java-based applications on the image
to OpenJDK 7, since Oracle has announced that Sun Java can no longer be
included in Linux distributions. There has also been a lot of work to
translate OSGeo-Live documentation to more languages, and the core
documentation is now included in ten languages. More information
and downloads are available at the OSGeo Live web page.

Volume 11: deegree Software Project Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

Software development for the deegree Project during 2011 was focused
on the Feature Service, Map Service, Catalogue Service and underlying
core modules. Data access modules for PostGIS, Oracle, MySQL and SQL
Server were created or improved, with support for complex application
schemas and different access modes (such as blob and relational).
Basic support for WFS 2.0 was also implemented.

In March 2011 the project released deegree 3.0.3. Version 3.1 was
released in October. Version 0.4.2 of iGeoDesktop was released in July.

Presentations on deegree were given at the following events:

Runder Tisch GIS in Munich, Germany during March 2011.
FOSSGIS in Heidelberg, Germany during April 2011.
INSPIRE Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland during July 2011.
AGIT in Salzburg, Austria during July 2011.
INTERGEO: OSGeo Park in Nürnberg, Germany during September 2011.
During the OSGeo Bolsena code sprint deegree’s INSPIRE capabilities
were improved, along with administration and performance enhancements.
An intensive code quality review was carried out during the summer
of 2011.
deegree project contributors Andreas and Markus opened up their
developer blogs in July 2011.
Reijer Copier, Johannes Wilden and Andreas Schmitz have been
nominated as new TMC members in October.
Andreas Poth resigned from the PSC in November.
A roadmap for deegree 3 releases was set up and discussed among
TMC and PSC.

Areas for Improvement

The project would like to improve outreach material of all kind. It wants to further open management of the project, increasing transparency. It wants to increase the number and type of contributions to the project. All kinds of contributions are welcome from an increased number of contributors.

Opportunities to Help

The project is looking for help to test release candidates at an early stage.
It also needs help to provide or improve documentation (especially by native
speakers of a language) and help contributing to tutorial production process.
The project is actively seeking contributions to deegree 3 development. The
project also encourages users and developers to share their experiences
with deegree.

Outlook for 2012

The project has the following goals for 2012:

Hold a deegree summit as combined TMC and PSC meeting.
Create and improve degree security modules.
Improve deegree project web site and other outreach materials.
Perform an infrastructure review and renewal.
Make the deegree 3.2 “INSPIRE” release.
Plan a deegree day.

Volume 11: GeoMoose Software Project Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

The GeoMOOSE Software Project made its version 2.4 release in 2011.
This included fixes to measure, display, and printing, and a dependency
change from dbase to SQLLite. The project was also accepted into OSGeo
Incubation in 2011 and made the migration from SourceForge to OSGeo
infrastructure. As part of the incubation process the project also
adopted Project Steering Committee Guidelines.

Events

A GeoMoose Project Steering Committee meeting and a GeoMOOSE code
sprint were held at FOSS4G 2011 in Denver.

GeoMoose projects were presented at FOSS4G in Denver and GIS-In-Action.

Areas for Improvement

A more detailed development roadmap would help show where GeoMoose is headed.

Opportunities to Help

The project could use help with the development of an automated testing
suite and updates to project documentation.

Outlook for Next Year

2012 looks to be a thrilling year for the project with lots of activity!
This will include more releases.

Volume 11: GRASS Software Project Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

The GRASS software project released version 6.4.2RC1. This release included eleven (11) new modules and major changes in five (5) existing modules.

GRASS 6.4.2 RC1 Release Details

New Modules

v.net.allpairs
v.net.bridge
v.net.centrality
v.net.components
v.net.connectivity
v.net.distance
v.net.flow
v.net.spanningtree
v.net.timetable
i.topo.corr
m.nvis.image

Existing Module Changes

r.univar and r3.univar
v.generalize
v.out.ogr
v.kernel
i.rectify

Events

From February 9 to 11, 2011 the GRASS and FOSS4G-IT User Meeting 2011 was held in Trento, Italy.

On May 12 and 13, 2011 at the Open Software for Geodesy and Science Conference in Wroclaw, Poland where lectures, practical classes and individual consultations were offered.

On May 19 and 20, 2011 talks on GRASS were given at the International Conference on Free Software and Open Source in Geoinformatics, in Prague, Czech Republic.

From May 20 to 25, 2011 the GRASS GIS Community Sprint 2011 was held in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

From June 6 to 9, 2011 the Scientific Workshop 2011 “Spatial Analysis with GRASS” took place in the Department of Climatology and Atmosphere Protection, University of Wroclaw.

From June 17 to 19, 2011 the first GRASS and GFOSS Hellenic Users Camp was held at Paou Monastery, in Pelion, Volos, Greece.

Areas for Improvement

The GRASS software project would like to develop a migration guide for public agencies and wants to improve the sponsorship program.

Opportunities to Help

The software project is looking for help in translating GRASS GIS messages. It also needs help preparing marketing material, including updates to flyers and posters and preparation of a new web site.

Volume 11: QGIS Software Project Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

The QGIS Software Project made the release of QGIS 1.7.0 “Wroclaw” on
June 19, 2011. It also supervised three (3) projects for the 2011 Google
Summer of Code. These Summer of Code projects included a SAGA interface
for QGIS, a Database Manager Plug-In, and QGIS Mobile. In addition,
during 2011 the project provided a new wiki and bug tracker.

Events

The QGIS project held a number of developer meetings
(‘hackfests’ and ‘bughuntings’) during 2011. The purpose of these meetings
is to gather people committed to improving the Quantum GIS project. These
people include developers, documenters, bug reporters as well as users.

In 2011 the following developer meetings were held:

In 2011 the following user meetings were held:

Areas for Improvement

The software project is interested in setting up a software test suite and
in making improvements and consolidations to the user interface.

Opportunities to Help

The Quantum GIS project welcomes help from developers, UI designers, software
testers, translators and users. Join the mailing lists or visit one of our
events to learn more.

Outlook for Next Year

In 2012 the software project would like to make the release of QGIS 1.8.
It hopes to again participate in the Google Summer of Code. It will continue
to host developer and user meetings.

Volume 11: OSGeo Greek Chapter Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

On June 17 to 19, 2011 the chapter carried out its main event with great success. It was a joint effort organized by the OSGeo Greek Local Chapter, the Greek GI Association (HellasGI) and the Greek Open Source Association (E/ELLAK). The event was the First GRASS and GFOSS Users’ Camp. It was held at the Paou Monastery, University of Thessaly, Pelion, Volos, Greece.

The event was highly successful with over 50 participants who stayed for the whole duration of the event. Many Greek and international experts (people from GRASS and gvSIG communities were invited) presented issues related to the main theme. Many participants recommended the event be repeated next year.

The chapter has coordinated work on the Greek translation of Version 4.5 and 5.0 of OSGeo Live. The Greek translation of the OSGeo Live DVD is one of the most complete.

Weekly tutorials and presentations were provided by the chapter at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) about Free and Open Source Geospatial Software. Approximately 15 to 20 students attend each week.

The chapter has also coordinated Open Source Geospatial Software adoption in classes in universities. An example is the class at TEI of Serres with gvSIG and GRASS.

Areas for Improvement

We still do not have the participation in the chapter we expected. We need to intensify the efforts to increase the membership and the overall awareness. A big challenge is securing funding for organizing further events. Efforts to translate the OSGeo web site and some of the OSGeo Software stack into Greek will definitely help bring more people to the chapter.

Opportunities to Help

In the future we will definitely need speakers for national FOSS or local GIS events. We would also like to demonstrate some cases of successful use of FOSS GIS by the public sector to local government officials.

We would like to plan some demo classes on FOSS GIS for students in universities and how these can be integrated in their curricula in order to show that we can achieve the exact same educational result as programs that use proprietary software. (This process has started to happen but more involvement is needed).

Outlook for 2012

We would also be very interested in having the ability to apply for funding as a chapter or organization and we would like to seek help and information from other local chapters that have or plan to do the same. We would also like to become an official OSGeo Chapter.

Volume 11: OSGeo Francophone Chapter Annual Report Item

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Key Accomplishments

The Francophone chapter completed the clean-up of an administrative paper needed to set up a legal association for the chapter.

It also elected a new governing board in June 2011.

Areas for Improvement

The chapter would like to encourage people to contribute more to translation projects. It wants to create a marketing package and help people in organizing OSGeo booth at events. It would like to attract additional contributors and project managers. It has a general goal of improving communication in the Francophone geospatial community.

Opportunities to Help

The chapter has four (4) opportunities to help in chapter activties. This include help in translating MapServer documentation, help in organizing Francophone QGIS events, help in monitoring a booth at
several conferences, and help with chapter marketing duties.

Outlook for 2012

In 2012 the chapter would like to continue the work of setting up a legal association. It would also like to improve the document translation process. There are also plans to organize an “OSGeo-fr Day” event.

Volume 11: OSGeo Italian Chapter Annual Report Item

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Introduction

The OSGeo Italian Chapter was founded in 2007, and currently has around 90 members and 9 OSGeo Charter Members.

The chapter is carrying out activities related to free and open source software and about open data. In particular, the chapter supports the release of geodata from public agencies under a suitable open data license.

Key Accomplishments

The chapter carried out a number of community events in 2011. These events have been a great opportunity for discussion on new advances in open source geospatial software and on national geospatial solutions. They also provided networking opportunities for developers, researchers and users.

Events

Eighth Meeting “degli Utenti Italiani di GRASS”: This was a three (3) day conference targeted to researchers and developers on the field of open source GIS, especially GRASS GIS. The event took place in Trento University and included, as usual, both workshops and presentations.

GFOSS DAY 2011: This was a two (2) day conference, targeted mainly to professionals of the public and private sector. The event was held in Foggia. In the morning on the first day, workshops were held on several open source geospatial software packages. Workshops were carried out using the OSGeo Live environment, and a brief explanation about the OSGeo Live project was given to those in attendance.

Open Data and Document Study Day: On April 13th, 2011 in Bologna, the chapter organized a Study Day (Giornata di Studio) on geospatial open data. The participants included the chapter, Emilia-Romagna Region and CSI Piemonte. They produced a set of guidelines related to geospatial open data ready for application in the Italian context. The definitions in the guidelines were borrowed from Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Definition. The aim of the guidelines is to encourage the creation of services based on open data from public administrations. The guidelines recommend the usage of internationally recognized licenses, open formats, and raw data access.

OSMit2011: The annual OpenStreetMap Italian conference was sponsored by the chapter and two (2) chapter members were the organizers of the conference.

Member Activities

Chapter members collected donations for several open source geospatial software packages, as well as for GRASS GIS and QuantumGIS code sprints. Its members also participated in these code sprints. Chapter members are also active in other fields and associations, such as archaeology, ecology, public administration, and local Linux User Groups. These activities allow the chapter to increase the discussion and adoption of open source geospatial software outside the relatively small circle of GIS specialists.

Opportunities to Help

The chapter manages translation efforts on various FOSS software packages, including the OSGeo-Live DVD, and is a hub for packagers for various Linux distributions. Volunteers to assist with translating and packaging work are always welcome!

The GFOSS.it wiki is open to contributions and collects useful information about Italian geospatial data, as well as tips for software installation and configuration.

Outlook for 2012

The Thirteenth GRASS and GFOSS Meeting will be held on Trieste on February 15 to17, 2012.

At the annual meeting, chapter associates will elect the new Board of Directors and Chairman to be in charge during 2012-2013 term.

A qualified chapter representative will attend the Italian annual Conference of Free Software on Ancona, June 22 to 23, 2012.

The chapter plans to sponsor and attend the SmartCities event in Bologna on July 6, 2012.

The next GFOSS Day will be in Turin on November 14 to 17, 2012. For the first time this event will include the annual Open Street Map Italian conference (OSMit), thus signifying a strong integration between the OSM and open source geospatial communities.

Volume 11: OSGeo Korean Language Chapter Annual Report Item

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The OSGeo Korean Language Chapter was formed as an unofficial chapter in February, 2008 and changed its status to an official OSGeo Local Chapter in March, 2009. The OSGeo Korean Language Chapter had 194 members at the end of 2011.

Events

On October 28, 2011 the chapter held the first annual OSGeo Korean Language Chapter Conference at KINTEX in Goyang City, Korea. Keynote speakers included Arnulf Christl, Toru Mori, Daisuke Yoshida, Byungnam Choi, and Sanghee Shin. The event was highly successful with between 60 to 80 participants, 5 keynote talks and 8 additional presentations.

The chapter held two (2) regular chapter meetings in February and August of 2011. Both meetings were held in Seoul, Korea. At the meetings chapter members shared knowledge & experiences around open source GIS. They also discussed the future activities of OSGeo Korean Language Chapter.

Key Accomplishments

The chapter carried out several localization & translation efforts. These efforts included translation of QGIS menus & messages. Efforts to translate QGIS, PostGIS, GeoServer, and OpenLayers materials were also started.

The chapter has been involved in several open source projects. These included the following:

KOPSS(Korea Planning Support System) Open API Project funded by KRIHS(Korean Research Institute of Human Settlement.)
The “Strategies on Building the Platform for Geospatial Information Technology Development : Based on Open Source Thinking” funded by KRIHS(Korean Research Institute of Human Settlement).
Development of open source GIS education program funded by NECGIS(National Education Center for GIS).

The chapter conducted several outreach activities including lecture, seminar and exchange programs.
Outreach lectures were provided to LH Corp, KRIHS, KCSC(Korea Cadastral Survey Corp) and other organizations. As part of the exchange program two (2) delegates were dispatched to Tokyo, Japan to give keynote speech at FOSS4G 2011 Tokyo/Osaka.

An Official OSGeo Korean Language Chapter web page was created to share our activities. It can be found at http://www.osgeo.kr.

Areas for Improvement

There is too much dependency on a few key members. The chapter wants to increase the number of active members. The Korean chapter is still not a legal entity, and this imposes several limitations on possible chapter activities.

The chapter would like to expand activities to an international scale. The chapter has very talented members, but their activities are somewhat isolated to Korea.

The chapter also needs to seek stable revenue sources to run our chapter. Currently the chapter finances are highly dependent on limited donation sources.

Opportunities to Help

The chapter is seeking speakers for FOSS4G Korea 2012 and is looking for opportunities to host more open source GIS related events in Korea or in Asia region.

Outlook for 2012

The chapter predicts a very prosperous year in 2012. As awareness of open source GIS increase in Korea rapidly, many organizations will want to cooperate with the chapter. In 2012, the chapter hopes to attract more members and to embark on efforts to run the chapter in more systematic way.

The chapter will explore the possibility of hosting FOSS4G 2015 in Korea with another GIS related society like KSIS(Korean Spatial Information Society).

OSGeo Governance Elections

Conferences and Meetings

FOSS4G Regional Events – A Sampler

Collaboration

Project News

Key Accomplishments

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2012

Key Accomplishments

Events

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for Next Year

Key Accomplishments

Events

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Key Accomplishments

Events

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for Next Year

Key Accomplishments

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2012

Key Accomplishments

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2012

Introduction

Key Accomplishments

Events

Member Activities

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2012

Events

Key Accomplishments

Areas for Improvement

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2012

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