Sol Katz Award

<< Back to Conference_Committee

OSGeo Public Site: http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz

Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software
The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The award acknowledges both the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

Recipients

 * 2015: Maria Brovelli - FOSS4G and GeoForAll advocate
 * 2014: Gary Sherman - QGIS founder
 * 2013: Arnulf Christl - OSGeo co-founder, Incubation mentor, advocate
 * 2012: Venkatesh Raghavan - FOSS4G founder, community leader world-wide
 * 2011: Martin Davis - JTS Topology Suite founder
 * 2010: Helena Mitasova - for two decades of contributions to GRASS GIS and the FOSS4G community (Announcement)
 * 2009: Daniel Morissette - MapServer and OGR projects (Announcement)
 * 2008: Paul Ramsey - leadership in PostGIS, GEOS and uDig projects (Announcement)
 * 2007: Steve Lime - MapServer founder and lead (Announcement)
 * 2006: Markus Neteler - GRASS GIS project lead (Announcement)
 * 2005: Frank Warmerdam - GDAL/OGR project lead

= Background =

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Katz

OSGeo Public Site: http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz

= Process =


 * Put out a call for nominations fairly widely on appropriate mailing lists (freegis, osgeo discuss, etc)
 * Nominations are sent privately to SolKatzAward@osgeo.org (public nominations will be discarded).
 * Committee selects awardee
 * Prepare plaque and tokens of appreciation
 * Present in FOSS4G closing plenary

= 2015 Call for Nominations =

SUBJECT: Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software - Call for Nominations

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to open nominations for the 2015 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software.

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early GFOSS archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large.

Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the open source world. Those interested in making a donation to the American Cancer Society, as per Sol's family's request, can do so at https://donate.cancer.org/index.

Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to [mailto:SolKatzAward@osgeo.org SolKatzAward@osgeo.org] with a description of the reasons for this nomination. Nominations will be accepted until 23:59 UTC on August 21st (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=8&day=21&year=2015&hour=23&min=59&sec=59). A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by the OSGeo selection committee.

The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced at the FOSS4G-Seoul event in September. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

It should be noted that past awardees and selection committee members are not eligible.

Past Awardees: 2014: Gary Sherman 2013: Arnulf Christl 2012: Venkatesh Raghavan 2011: Martin Davis 2010: Helena Mitasova 2009: Daniel Morissette 2008: Paul Ramsey 2007: Steve Lime 2006: Markus Neteler 2005: Frank Warmerdam

Selection Committee 2015:
 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova
 * Martin Davis
 * Venkatesh Raghavan
 * Arnulf Christl
 * Gary Sherman

= Extended Program Text =

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

Background
Sol Katz was born in Sweden (on August 3rd, 1947) and moved to NY at the age of 1. Yiddish was his first language, but he was amazingly bright, and learned both Hebrew and English quickly. After high school, he spent three years in the US Air Force, stationed in Germany, where he picked up yet another language. Following his brief military career, he decided to go to Brooklyn College in NY where he got his Bachelors in Geology in 2.5 years. He then married his wife Hedy in 1969, and went back to Brooklyn College while teaching in NY Public Schools and got his MA, also in Geology. After several years working for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in several states, he settled down in Lakewood, CO and decided to go back to school at the University of Denver in Computer Science and earned a second masters. At this time, he also had two children - Shanna and Risa. He was well loved in his office, at his children's school, and at home. Always full of laughter and good humor, Sol could easily be recognized by his flamboyant Hawaiian shirts and toucan or propeller hats. Sadly, after fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for almost a decade, Sol died April 23, 1999 in bed.

Open Source
Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities. In the early 80's, Sol assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System). This software was arguably the first open source GIS software in the world. Sol would later go on to release and maintain PC MOSS. He was also one of the first involved in public data translator utilities. Utilities that he developed for converting DEMs and reading SDTS files were contributed back to the geospatial community, and are still available today. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM continues to be implemented by many software projects. His legacy still lives on in the GFOSS world.

Pics submitted by his daughters:

Daughters Risa and Shanna introducing the award in 2011:

= Utilities =

Sol's code continues to be implemented in many software drivers, including the updated sdts2dem utility. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM was formerly available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/ (currently not available on the new BLM transfer system).

= Selection Committee 2015 =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova
 * Martin Davis
 * Venkatesh Raghavan
 * Arnulf Christl
 * Gary Sherman

= Selection Committee 2014 =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova
 * Martin Davis
 * Venkatesh Raghavan
 * Arnulf Christl

= Selection Committee (2013) =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova
 * Martin Davis
 * Venkatesh Raghavan

= Selection Committee (2012) =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova
 * Martin Davis

= Selection Committee (2011) =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette
 * Helena Mitasova

= Selection Committee (2010) =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Daniel Morissette

= Selection Committee (2009) =




 * Jeff McKenna (chair)
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina

= Selection Committee (2008) =




 * Frank Warmerdam (chair)
 * Markus Neteler
 * Steve Lime
 * Jeff McKenna

= Selection Committee (2007) =




 * Frank Warmerdam (chair)
 * Jeff McKenna
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Venkatesh Raghavan
 * Markus Neteler

= Selection Committee (2006) =




 * Frank Warmerdam (chair)
 * Jeff McKenna
 * Paul Ramsey
 * Sophia Parafina
 * Venkatesh Raghavan

= Selection Committee (2005) =




 * Sophia Parafina
 * Jeff McKenna
 * MUM3 Conference Committee

= 2005 Award Documents =


 * Call for Nominations
 * Text in MUM3 Program (includes BIO submitted from his daughter)

= Translations of this page =


 * French version - version française
 * Japanese version
 * Vietnamese version
 * Chinese version