Press Release 2006-07-19
This is a working draft. Questionable bits are in ALL CAPS.
Contact: Michael P. Gerlek
Email: info@osgeo.org
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) Celebrates Accomplishments at Six-Month Mark
Mapbender is first officially approved project; Foundation reaches hundreds of members; OSGeo presents at OSCON and GeoWeb
Seattle, Washington, USA, July 20 — The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) announced today that Mapbender, DESCRIPTION, has met all of the legal and community requirements to become the first official product supported by the Foundation. Just six months after its inception, the Foundation is already starting to make an impact the geospatial industry, providing a degree of quality assurance for open source geospatial software users and getting its message out to the GIS community at conferences and tradeshows.
Mapbender is First Approved OSGeo Project
<<TEXT TO COME FROM ARNULF: what Mapbender is, why it is an important tool, what graduation from Incubator status means. Should include quote from Arnulf, or some Big Name that uses it>>
OSGeo Hitting its Stride
The Foundation was formed early in 2006 by a diverse collection of open source advocates with the aim of supporting and promoting open source geospatial projects. In only six months, the Foundation's mailing lists are reaching hundreds of developers and users across the industry, with hundreds more also registered on the osgeo.org website.Already the Foundation has eight projects under incubation, all open source tools and applications that range from low level libraries to web services enviroments to a broad function desktop GIS. "We have enjoyed a great deal of support everywhere we have taken the OSGeo message," says Frank Warmerdam, Foundation president. "And through the OSGeo incubation process we are able to provide a high degree of confidence in OSGeo approved projects on issues from intellectual property, to healthy community functioning."
OSGeo on the Road
In addition to supporting actual software development, a big part of OSGeo's mission is to promote the use of open source software and public data within the GIS industry. Following on it's well-publicized success at Where 2.0 earlier this summer, where over 30 OSGeo members exhbited and presented, OSGeo will be at two other events next week. The Foundation is hosting a booth at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, in Portland, Oregon. OSGeo member Gary Lang (Autodesk) will be offering a keynote, and members Mark Lucas (Radiant Blue), Jo Walsh (Open Knowledge Foundation), and Aaron Racicot (EcoTrust) will all be speaking as well.
Also next week, OSGeo members will be presenting at GeoWeb 2006 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Michael P. Gerlek (LizardTech) will be speaking on OSGeo's mission, and Ian Turton (Pennsylvania State University) will be presenting a paper on geocollaborative systems using open standards and open software.
About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit.
OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The foundation's projects are all freely available and useable under an OSI-certified open source license.
© Copyright 2006 Open Source Geospatial Foundation, under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives (by-nd) License.