Open Source GIS History

Software projects
1978 - Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS). A pioneer vector-based geographic information system (GIS) developed by the U.S. Department of Interior. MOSS is still available to download (ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/). Mr. Carl Reed has written an article about MOSS history.

since 1982-today - GRASS (Geographical Resources Analysis Support System) is the earliest Open Source GIS which reached production status and supported both raster and vector data. It was originally developed from 1982 to 1995 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, since then by the international GRASS Development Team. Initially published as public domain software, its license was changed to GNU GPL (General Public License, see www.gnu.org) in 1999.

1995 - UMN MapServer project started. In 2002 MapServer gets Python support.

1998 - GDAL/OGR development started. Python support was added in 2000.

2000 - Atlantis Scientific launched OpenEV project

2001 - OSSIM initial revision in CVS

2001 - MapBuilder started. The end of life of MapBuilder project was officially announced in 28 July 2008

2001 - PostGIS started

2002 - Intevation,Gmbh starts Thuban projects

2002 - Quantum GIS initial revision in CVS

2002 - GEOS initial revision in CVS

2002 - AVPython for ArcView 3.x published as FOSS

2005 - MapGuide Open Source

2006 - MapBender gets first bits in CVS

In XX and XXI century, a series of other desktop and server Open Source GIS projects were started:
 * geospatial libraries: PROJ.4, Geotools, Geoserver, TerraLib
 * Desktop GIS: SAGA GIS, uDIG, gvSIG, ILWIS
 * Web mapping/WebGIS: deegree
 * geostatistics software: gstat, R Project for Statistical Computing
 * metadata catalogs: GeoNetwork Open Source

Organizations
1992: "Open GRASS Foundation" (OGF)

1994: OGF was re-structured as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

2006: Open Source Geospatial Foundation (http://www.osgeo.org) established whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies, data and educational material.