Open Source Geospatial Foundation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Free and open source geospatial community. It will also serve 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 draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the Apache Foundation, including a membership composed of individuals drawn from foundation projects who are selected for membership status based on their active contribution to foundation projects and governance.

OSGeo projects include:

Community MapBuilder [1]
GeoTools [2]
Mapbender [3]
MapGuide Open Source [4]
MapServer [5]
GDAL/OGR [6]
GeoNetwork opensource [7]]
GRASS GIS [8]
OpenLayers [9]
OSSIM GIS [10]

The foundation is pursuing goals beyond software development, such as promoting more open access to government produced geospatial data, which is a major problem outside of North America. Also education and training are addressed. Various committees within the foundation work on implementing the strategy.

[edit] Governance

The OSGeo is thoroughly community driven and has a lightweight organizational overhead consisting of 45 initial members, 9 directors and the president Frank Warmerdam. It is organized in more than 20 projects. Eight of these focus on software development projects (see above) or organizational matters like board issues, web site, visibility, education, public geodata and promotion. The OSGeo community collaborates via a Wiki, Mailing Lists and IRC.

[edit] GeoNetwork opensource

This project is a free and open source cataloging application, released under GNU General Public License, to manage spatially referenced resources. It is a standardized and decentralized spatial information management environment designed to enable access to geo-referenced databases, cartographic products and related metadata from a variety of sources, enhancing the spatial information exchange and sharing between organizations and their audience, using the capacities of the internet.

Maps, including those derived from satellite imagery, are effective communicational tools and play an important role in the work of decision makers (e.g., sustainable development planners and humanitarian and emergency managers) in need of quick, reliable and up-to-date user-friendly cartographic products as a basis for action and to better plan and monitor their activities; GIS experts in need of exchanging consistent and updated geographical data; and spatial analysts in need of multidisciplinary data to perform preliminary geographical analysis and make reliable forecasts.

The software has been deployed to various organizations, the first being FAO-GeoNetwork and VAM-SIE-GeoNetwork, both at their headquarters in Rome, Italy. Furthermore, the WHO, UNEP, CGIAR and the Global Change Information and Research Centre (GCIRC) of China are working on GeoNetwork opensource implementations as their spatial information management capacity.