FOSS4G2007 Press Release

Victoria, BC, September 23, 2007

Over 600 software programmers and technology aficionados are converging on Victoria this week to attend the 2007 Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference. Open source is a concept sweeping the software industry, a form of collaborative programming and knowedge sharing that allows a global community of programmers to pool their efforts and build complex systems. The resulting software is often available for free, or at a cost far less than traditional software licensed from large corporations.

The geospatial software users attending this conference work with open source software to process and share maps, build online mapping sites, analyze satellite imagery data, calculate flood zones, gather GPS data, map the third world, and much more.

Conference chair Paul Ramsey sees Victoria as a hotbed of open source programming. “There are whole categories of software that depend on open source software written right here in Victoria. The provincial and federal governments have been very supportive and helped build a unique local industry over the past five years”, said Ramsey.

This year’s conference is sponsored by industry heavyweights like Google, Autodesk, ESRI and Leica Geosystems, as well as local firms with roots in the open source community.

In addition to a packed schedule of presentations and classes throughout the week, the Open Street Map project will be having a community mapping session to map Victoria's streets on Sunday the 23rd, and the software developers will be huddling for an intense day of programming on Friday the 28th.

For more information on FOSS4G 2007, please contact Paul Ramsey at 250-885-0632 or email pramsey@foss4g2007.org.