Sol Katz Award

<< Back to Conference_Committee

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

• 2006: Markus Neteler - GRASS GIS project lead.
• 2005: Frank Warmerdam - GDAL/OGR project lead.

Background

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

OSGeo Public Site: http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/solkatz/index.html

Selection Committee

• Frank Wamerdam (chair)
• Jeff McKenna
• Paul Ramsey
• Venkatesh Raghavan
• Sophia Parafina

Process

• Put out a call for nominations fairly widely on appropriate mailing lists (freegis, osgeo discuss, etc)
• Nominations are sent to SolKatzAward@conference.osgeo.org.
• Committee selects awardee
• Prepare plaque and tokens of appreciation
• Present in Foss4g2006 closing plenary

2005 Award Documents

• Call for Nominations
• Text in MUM3 Program (includes BIO submitted from his daughter)
• Pics submitted by his daughter:

2007 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 2007 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://www.cancer.org/asp/donate/don_multi_donate.asp?navToScreen=don_1.

Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to SolKatzAward@osgeo.org with a description of the reasons for this nomination. Nominations will be accepted until midnight UTC on September 7th (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=10&day=07&year=2007&hour=0&min=0&sec=0). A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by an OSGeo designated selection committee.

The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced on September 27th at the FOSS4G 2007 conference (http://www.foss4g2007.org/) closing plenary in Victoria, Canada. 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.

2006 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.

Solomon Stuart Katz aka Sol 1947-1999

Background

Sol Katz was born in Sweden 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 is still available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/. His legacy still lives on in the GFOSS world.