Italiano Chapter Report 2012

• Contact name: Margherita Di Leo

Introduction

The italian GFOSS community is represented by the association GFOSS.it, OSGeo Italian Chapter, founded in 2007, counting 112 members (statistics updated at Jan 2013), 11 OSGeo Charter Members and 1 OSGeo Board Member. GFOSS.it is carrying out activities regarding both open data and geospatial free and open source software. Particularly, it seconds the release of geodata from public administrations under a suitable open license.

Key Accomplishments

2012 has been an active year for the Italian Local Chapter! The main activities include participation or organization of events, support to projects, as well as some noticeable members' activities.

Events

• Participation to XIII Meeting di GRASS e GFOSS. The annual meeting has been held on 15-16-17 February, 2012, for the second time in Trieste after ten years. Such event is not exclusively addressed to GRASS users but in general to everyone using geospatial free and open source software and public geodata. The annual GFOSS.it assembly has taken place in this occasion.
• Participation to VI Conferenza sul Software Libero (CONFSL 2012). CONFSL 2012 is an annual Italian meeting about free and open source software. It has been held in Ancona on 21-22-23 June.
• Support and participation to Smart Cities event in Bologna on July 6: Diritti digitali e dati aperti: le basi per Città e Comunità smart. Such event has been organized by the association "Stati Generali dell'Innovazione" (SGI) in conjunction with Regione Emilia-Romagna.
• Organization of GFOSS DAY 2012 - OSMit 2012. The event has been held in Turin on November 14-15-16-17. The Association has decided to organize a second General Assembly of the Associates, in order to promote exchange of idea and socialization, as well as to hear from the associates their opinions in regards to the ongoing activities. Furthermore, for the first time the GFOSS day has been organized as a coupled event with the annual Open Street Map Italian conference (OSMit), thus pushing a stronger cooperation between OSM and GFOSS communities. After the conference, a Mapping Party has taken place.

Members' activities

• Sandro Furieri, President of GFOSS.it, has become a member of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
• Some members of GFOSS.it, coordinated by Luca Delucchi, contributed to the Italian translation of OSGeo-Live documentation (percentage reached 77.8%).
• Maurizio Napolitano has worked in preparation for the next Opendata day in Italy and reported to the community on the concepts of linked-open-geospatial-data.
• Ongoing GFOSS' activity in promoting the concept of open data for PA is summarized in the document produced, still under internal review.
• Anne Ghisla has been elected as OSGeo Board member in August 2012.
• Among the participants of OSGeo Google Summer of Code, 3 of the 22 students, 2 mentors and the mentor administrator were from Italy.

Support to projects

• GFOSS.it has donated 250 euro to support the pledge raised by Sandro Santilli for the implementation of a Geometry to TopoGeometry importer in PostGIS-2.0.
• GFOSS.it has donated 250 euro to the community funding to help take OpenLayers to version 3.0.

Opportunities to Help

GFOSS.it manages translation efforts on various FOSS software packages and suites, including OSGeo-Live DVD, and is a hub for packagers for various Linux distributions. Volunteers are always welcome! The GFOSS.it wiki is open to all FOSS contributors and collects information about Italian geospatial data, as well as tips for software installation and configuration.

Outlook for 2013

Some activities in preparation for 2013 are:

• Participation to XIV Meeting degli Utenti Italiani di GRASS e GFOSS in Genova;
• Co-organization of GRASS Community Sprint 2013 in Genova, Italy;
• Organization of GFOSS Day 2013;
• Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM) on the creation of a web portal that will facilitate the search, visualization and download of open geodata. This project will serve mainly, but not exclusively, the Italian Territory, and will be made only using free and open source software.