OSGeo News

Denver, CO, USA. 15 January 2011.

The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference is pleased to announce the Call for Workshops and Tutorials for the 2011 conference, being held September 12 - 16, 2011, in Denver, CO, USA.

FOSS4G is the premier international conference focused on open source geospatial software. Users and developers are encouraged to present their latest projects and software to demonstrate the power of open source geospatial solutions through a series of workshop sessions and tutorial presentations. Sessions may cover systems that are solely open source, or a combination of open and closed source solutions.

Workshops

Workshops are 3 hour hands-on experiences with participants following along with the instructor, working directly with the application under discussion. All workshop rooms will be equipped a projector, and with computers for participants to use. Instructors will need to discuss pre-installation requirements with the Conference Organizing Committee if required.

Workshops are expected to require considerable effort to create, with past experience showing that three days of preparation per hour of presentation are required to produce a high quality workshop.

Additionally you will be expected to develop material for attendees to take home with them, such as handouts, workbook, CD-ROMs, etc. Due to the effort involved in producing and presenting a workshop, instructors will receive a single complimentary registration to the conference for delivering a workshop.

Tutorials

Tutorials are 90 minute sessions during the regular presentations portion of the conference. Tutorial rooms will not be equipped with computers. However, presenters may make use of delegate laptops and the FOSS4G LiveDVD. Preference will be given to hands-on tutorials. Any hands-on aspects to a tutorial will be the responsibility of the presenter and needs to be described in the tutorial description.

Presenters making use of the LiveDVD will be expected to contribute to testing pre-releases to ensure material and software is properly installed. To discuss your requirements for LiveDVD, please contact the LiveDVD community.

Topics of Interest

All submissions will be considered, but particular interest will be shown in the following topics:

* Practical Introductions to FOSS4G software
* Interoperability / Spatial Data Infrastructure
* Integration between open and closed source solutions
* Free and open geospatial data
* Performance tuning

Application form

Follow this link to submit your proposals. Please add a 300 word abstract, in plain text format (pasting a text with style markup could make the process fail). The deadline for workshop / tutorial submissions is January 30.

Communication

All workshop and tutorial applicants are encouraged to use the workshop mailing list to ask questions to the workshop committee.

General FOSS4G 2011 questions and discussion should occur on the main conference mailing list.

Thank you.

-Workshop Committee 2011

On behalf of the GDAL/OGR development team and community, I am pleased to announce the release of GDAL/OGR 1.8.0. GDAL/OGR is a C++ geospatial data access library for raster and vector file formats, databases and web services. It includes bindings for several languages, and a variety of command line tools.

The 1.8.0 release is a major new feature release with the following highlights:

• New GDAL drivers : GTX, HF2, JPEGLS, JP2OpenJPEG, JPIPKAK, KMLSUPEROVERLAY, LOS/LAS, MG4Lidar, NTv2, OZI, PDF, RASDAMAN, XYZ
• New OGR drivers : AeronavFAA, ArcObjects, GPSBabel, HTF, LIBKML, MSSQLSpatial, NAS, OpenAir, PDS, PGDump, SOSI, SUA, WFS
• Significantly improved OGR drivers : DXF, GML
• New implemented RFCs:
  • RFC 7: Use VSILFILE for VSI*L Functions
  • RFC 24: Progressive data support in GDAL
  • RFC 28: OGR SQL Generalized Expressions
  • RFC 29: OGR Set Ignored Fields
  • RFC 30: Unicode Filenames
  • RFC 33: GTIFF - Corrected PixelIsPoint Interpretation
• New utility : gdallocationinfo

More complete information on the new features and fixes can be found in the http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/Release/1.8.0-News">GDAL/OGR 1.8.0 Release News. Source code (zip and tar.gz), testsuite and docs/web site are available for download.

OSGeo is pleased to announce that the Geomajas project has graduated from the incubation process and is now a full fledged OSGeo project with Pieter De Graef appointed as project representative (Vice President, Geomajas).

Geomajas is the extensible open source web mapping framework, enabling integrated GIS solutions for businesses and government. It has an integrated client-server architecture, with a high focus on server-side integration of your data (be it through GeoTools or Hibernate). This means that you apply your security and business logic on the server before anything gets send to the client, resulting in robust applications (see architecture) and a real thin client.

Geomajas is a Java based end-to-end solution. By leveraging the GWT, Hibernate, GeoTools and Spring, Geomajas offers an enterprise environment for building web GIS applications.

Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project.

Bonn, November 17th 2010

The deegree release Celsius (3.0) was published right on time for the 10th anniversary of the project celebrated at this year's deegree day. Ten years of experience with deegree - the free and open source software library for spatial data infrastructures and other web based geo services - prove that consistent work with open standards in open software results in long-term stable solutions and sustains a successful position in the market.

deegree 3.0 incorporates current developments of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE). It offers full implementation of the OGC protocols WMS, WFS, WPS and CS-W and is therefore the perfect match for efficient spatial data infrastructures. Serving large amounts of data with high performance was a special focus for the development. This qualifies deegree 3 to provide scalable infrastructure nodes for e.g. INSPIRE implementations or to realize geospatial web services for public information systems (e.g. the German AFIS, ALKIS, ATKIS family of specifications) and beyond.

A simplified and easy to use configuration concept hides the complexity of the underlying data model. Some preconfigured applications help users to easily find their way [1].

The deegree utahDemo [2] contains the OGC Web Map Service and Web Feature Service. It demonstrates improved support for complex styling rules based on the OGC standard Symbology Encoding. The application is preconfigured and ready-to-run instantly.

The preconfigured application inspireNode [3] is designed for operators of INSPIRE services, as it provides both download- and view-services for all INSPIRE-Annex-I-Themes. It contains a fully transactional Web Feature Service and a Web Map Service that will render the INSPIRE styling rules on-the-fly. Today, deegree 3.0 is the only open source software framework with these capabilities.

"deegree 3 is a major leap forward" says Markus Schneider, technical lead of the project. "Not only with regard to technical features like the support of complex application schemas and a native support for all relevant GML versions. It also applies to the development process: Tools have been integrated for automated quality assurance and for the build process of the software."

[1] http://wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/DownloadPage
[2] http://wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/deegree3/UtahDemo
[3] http://wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/InspireNode

OSGeo members,

The 2010 process is complete, and the new charter members are, in alphabetical order:

• Alex Mandel
• Andreas Hocevar
• Anne Ghisla
• Astrid Emde
• Danilo Furtado
• Gavin Fleming
• Hirofumi Hayashi
• Jo Cook
• Maria Brovelli
• Milena Nowotarska

I apologize for not sending out more process reminders, but I was on the road in Japan and not really watching the clock. However, the voting period has now passed, and over 50% of the membership participated in the selection process.

Thanks to all the nominees who took the time to write to the discuss list about their nomination.

A significant number of voters expressed that the number of slots was not sufficient given the number of quality nominees, which is an issue I will refer to the Board for next year's process.

Thanks for your votes,

Paul Ramsey
2010 OSGeo Chief Returning Officer

The OSGeo Journal team is glad to announce the availability of the 2009 Annual
Report, including several reports about FOSS4G, various projects, local
chapters and OSGeo sponsors:

• FOSS4G: 2009 conference review by the Conference Chair
• Software Project Reports: deegree, GeoTools, GRASS GIS, Mapbender, MapServer, OSSIM, Quantum GIS
• Local Chapter Reports:Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, California, China, Finland, Francophone, German, Greek, Italian, Japan, Ottawa, Poland, Quebec, Romania, Spanish, Twin Cities, United Kingdom
• Sponsors: Borealis, LizardTech

Thank you to all contributors!

Download directly:
http://www.osgeo.org/ojs/index.php/journal/article/view/181/142 (10MB PDF)

For more information:
http://www.osgeo.org/ojs/index.php/journal/issue/view/30/showToc

Feedback and corrections welcomed at:
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/newsletter

Tyler Mitchell
Editor in chief, OSGeo Journal
tmitchell@osgeo.org - +1-250-303-1831
See you at FOSS4 2011 Denver in September!