Dear All,
Jeff McKenna has tendered his resignation from the position of President and Board of Directors on personal grounds.
Jeff is a pillar of OSGeo, being a lively presence at Open Source Geospatial events since the early days of [https://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/Conferences MapServer User Meetings]. He was also a key person at [http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/grass04/ FOSS GRASS User Conference] where the idea of having a joint conference combining GRASS GIS, MapServer and other [https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G FOSS4G] communities was mooted which fruited in the form [http://2006.foss4g.org/ FOSS4G-2006] held in Laussane. Jeff has been a constant companion and a source of inspiration during our decade long OSGeo journey.
During his tenure on the OSGeo Board, Jeff has traversed across the globe spreading the message of OSGeo and sharing his passion for FOSS4G. He has gone to remote corners of our planet to get local chapters started and patiently interacted with diverse audience ranging from under-graduate students to top leaders from academia, industry and government. Jeff has put community before self and worked relentlessly to bring worldwide reach to our Foundation. Combined with his rare passion, Jeff possesses a unique knack of understanding and assimilating different cultures which has greatly helped in nurturing diversity in our communities.
Apart form his groundbreaking work in representing OSGeo globally, he has also made time to produce excellent documentation and packaging for some of our leading software products. Jeff’s dedication and passion will continue to motivate all members of our foundation.
The board received Jeff’s request on 12 December 2015 and asked him to reconsider his decision. At the 30 January, 2016 Face to Face meeting, after careful consideration of his reply, the OSGeo Board has motioned and unanimously accepted his resignation. The board also passed a motion to formally express our sincere gratitude for Jeff’s immense contributions to the OSGeo Foundation in his capacity as President and Board Member.
Jeff McKenna continues his engagements with the OSGeo Foundation as a Charter Member and as PSC members in several of the Foundation Projects. We look forward to seek his advice and active participation in our future endeavors.
Thank you from all of us, Jeff and we look forward to your contributions to OSGeo in the years ahead.
The Board of Directors
OSGeo Foundation
=== About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation ===
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to foster global adoption of open geospatial technology by being an inclusive software foundation devoted to an open philosophy and participatory community driven development. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It provides 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 also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The Foundation’s projects are all freely available and useable under an OSI-certified open source license.