OSGeo News

The OpenLayers Development Team is proud to announce the release of OpenLayers 2.10, the latest stable release of OpenLayers.

The 2.10 release adds several important features. Some of the highlights include:

• Support for Google Maps v3
• Significant improvements to the panel control functionality
• Improvements in support for WMS, WFS standards

... and many other bug fixes.

http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.10/Notes

Prof. Helena Mitasova was honored with the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software 2010 during the closing plenary of the FOSS4G 2010 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Helena has contributed a variety of methods, algorithms, documentation and tutorials amongst other efforts to the FOSS4G community. Her outstanding contributions date back to 1990 when she started to develop new analytical modules for GRASS GIS. Since then she served on many committees within OSGeo, she is coauthor of the first Open Source GIS book; she published over 50 scientific and academic publications linked to FOSS4G and contributed a rich OSGeo GIS dataset to the community which has become a standard for software testing and teaching. See Helena's video acceptance.

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.

We are pleased to announce the release of GRASS GIS 6.4.0, the first in the new line of 6.4 stable releases. As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support. The next release (6.4.1) will introduce a few new features which are still undergoing final testing, but after that all further 6.4 releases will be bugfix-only. Due to our highly conservative stabilization policy this is the first official version of GRASS to introduce new features since October 2006 and supersedes the previous stable line of GRASS 6.2. As such the floodgates are open and there are many new features to explore and many new structural improvements to be found in the software.

GRASS 6.4 brings a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. Our new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) is debuted, Python is now a fully supported scripting language, and for the first time since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS will now run natively on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows! In addition to bringing the software to a host of new users, the ability to run GRASS on any common computer platform furthers our goal of open access to the software. We hope you will enjoy the ability to use this program on the systems that are most convenient to you and your work.

Due to the freshness of WinGrass there may still be a few rough edges yet to discover, but after more than a year of dedicated testing and quality-assurance review we are very pleased with the results. Users can be confident to use this version for their day to day work, indeed due to the open development model many already do. Existing UNIX and Mac users will be happy to know that these new features do not disrupt the base GIS which remains as solid as ever and fully backwards compatible with earlier GRASS 6.0 and 6.2 releases. The venerable Tcl/Tk GUIs are also still available if you prefer to use them.

The GRASS software including over 400 built-in analysis modules and 100 community supplied add-on modules and toolboxes can be downloaded for free from the main GRASS website at http://grass.osgeo.org/, or from many local mirrors worldwide. In addition to the extensive documentation which comes with the software, our Wiki help system contains a wealth of user supplied tips and tricks, tutorials, and guides.

Since 6.4 entered the testing phase work has begun on GRASS 7 and is progressing rapidly, including many new wxGUI improvements and tools which we hope to bring over for the upcoming 6.4.1 release.

More complete information on the new features of GRASS 6.4.0 are available at:
http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass640.html

OSGeo is pleased to announce Metaspatial as OSGeo's latest Associate Sponsor. Owner, Arnulf Christl, has also put in substantial time and energy as OSGeo's President this past year and in several other roles. Small businesses, like his, working with our software are a key growth area for open source geospatial software.

Arnulf has a clear motivation for sponsoring OSGeo financially:

"A common understanding is growing that Open Source should be managed by a truly independent party. But what does 'independent' mean these days? Instead of independence we learn that everything is connected - be it the global climate across all continents or the global economy spanning all nations. 'Independent' in the context of collaboratively creating spatial software and accessible geodata means that there is no single organizational entity driving things. Instead a diverse community runs things. Part of that community are globally distributed and economically independent private companies of all sizes - one of them is Metaspatial. "

"The next big player in the geospatial realm who needs to understand this is the public sector. The public administration is by far the most extensive user of OSGeo software and at the same time producer of high quality geospatial data with the highest potential of becoming available to use for free. They are living and breathing openness for decades already - but seem to have lost sight of their mission a bit in all the economic shaking. The next target for OSGeo fundraising is the public administration. You can help by making contact and spreading the word. Contact Tyler Mitchell for more information."

Thank you to Metaspatial for joining our program!

Tyler Mitchell
31-Aug-2010

Here are the final results from the 2010 voting for the open seats of
the OSGeo Board of Directors. There were four seats open and they have
been filled by, in alphabetical order:

• Arnulf Christl
• Daniel Morissette
• Frank Warmerdam
• Tim Schaub

Thanks to everyone for running. The voting participation was 82% and
there were no tie scores to arbitrate.
Your complete resulting Board is:

• Arnulf Christl
• Chris Schmidt
• Daniel Morissette
• Frank Warmerdam
• Geoff Zeiss
• Jeff McKenna
• Markus Neteler
• Ravi Kumar
• Tim Schaub

We will complete the 2010 election process with the selection of new
Charter Members in September after FOSS4G.

Yours,

Paul Ramsey
2010 Returning Officer

Thanks to the hard work of our community, the Geomajas team is proud to announce the release of Geomajas 1.7.1.

The biggest improvements occurred in the plug-in system. Plug-ins are now automatically registered, allowing extensions and overwriting base services. Plug-ins register their dependencies and Geomajas checks at startup whether the dependent modules are available and compatible. The plug-ins now have an independent release cycle to allow improvements to be easily released.

A complete description of the release is available at:

http://geomajas.org/geomajas-1.7.1