Poland

Introduction
We are a group of people interested and involved in the development and promotion of open software in GIS. The group includes the members of woGIS – the Open Source Task Force formed formerly by the Surveyor General of Poland for the adaptation, developments, and supporting the application of open software to the creation of GIS, and, specifically, the national spatial data infrastructure, and geoinformation and metadata services conforming to the OGC standards. Among its members are representatives from the academic community and the private sector. The group is also open to accept new members who declare access and agree with its goals and mission. Currently the group is an informal organization of people involved in the creation of software and IT infrastructure for GIS based on open software. The activities are aimed at accomplishing the declared goals and consists, among others, of: (i) maintaining a web page for disseminating information about OSS software for GIS and woGIS activities, (ii) maintaining a discussion forum associated with the web page, (iii) initiating, running, and supporting GIS projects using open source software, and (iv) organizing systematic work meetings devoted to the current projects and ongoing work. It is our intention to make this group the Poland OSGeo Chapter. Our Chapter Mission Statement and Goals are as follows:

Chapter Mission Statement

 * To support the development of open source geospatial software, and promote its widespread use in Poland.
 * To support the INSPIRE implementation in Poland, based on open source geospatial software.
 * To promote GIS education based on open source geospatial software in Poland.
 * To develop and promote Polish open source geospatial software.

Chapter Goals

 * To provide the platform for open source geospatial software community integration in Poland (mailing list, forum, documentation, reference spatial data sets, wiki, etc.).
 * To provide an organized structure for experiences and knowledge sharing in Poland (workshops, conferences, demonstration, etc.).
 * To organize users, software developers and interested volunteers in Poland.
 * To lobby for the idea of open source geospatial software within Polish academic community.
 * To encourage the implementation of open standards and standards-based interoperability in the Polish SDI (including metadata).
 * To become SDIC in INSPIRE.
 * To support software internationalization and localization to Polish requirements.
 * To organize the resources for foundation projects.
 * To provide direct links to the OSGeo.

Chapter Members
Initial member list:
 * Adam Iwaniak (University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland)
 * Tomasz Kubik (Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland)
 * Bartosz Kopańczyk (Geoscope, Inc., Poland)
 * Paweł Netzel (University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland)
 * Witold Paluszyński (Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland)

Representative:
 * Tomasz Kubik