Annual Report 2009 Compiled

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Compiled version of 2009 Report

Executive Reports

in svn already

http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/journal/volume_7/en-us/editorial/editorial.tex

Board of Directors Report 2009

in svn already

Finance Report 2009

Committee Reports

Conference Report 2009

contact: Cameron Shorter, FOSS4G chair

OSGeo premier annual international conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) was held in Sydney, Australia in October 2009 and showcased the latest Open Source Geospatial technologies, standards, case studies and geospatial trends.

The conference highlighted technologies revolving around location based applications, driven through ubiquitous mobile platforms, extensive access of no-cost maps and data, crowd sourcing, development and uptake of solid spatial standards, integration of cross-agency data through Spatial Data Infrastructures, development and commercialisation of Geospatial Open Source software, cloud computing and more. There were presentations from the best international Developers, Policy Makers, Sponsors, Decision Makers and Geospatial Professionals discuss the latest geospatial applications, standards, government programs, business processes and case studies. It continued to retain many of the engaging characteristics of its Open Source heritage. With Bird of a Feather sessions, code sprints, install-fests and impromptu project meetings, it was an unparalleled opportunity to take part in active communities and provide input into the direction for a variety of projects.

FOSS4G 2009 saw a consolidation of companies offering enterprise support debunking the myth that there is no one you can call to support Open Source. At FOSS4G, attendees talked with the enthusiastic communities in workshops, install-fests, and between sessions, and met the companies stepping up to provide enterprise support for Open Source products.

Some highlights of FOSS4G 2009 were:

  • Introduction of strong OGC involvement though the a Climage Challange Integration Plugfest coordinated by the OGC.
  • The introduction of the Arramagong Live DVD (later renamed OSGeo-Live) which contained preinstalled Open Source GeoSpatial applications, and which was handed out to all delegates.
  • A refinement of the marketing pipeline with press releases being forwarded through community leaders.
  • Both the main website and press releases were translated into 12 languages.
  • The conference was planned before, then run during the year of the Global Financial Crisis, and continued to retain a moderst profit, when similar conferences were reporting losses.
  • A comprehensive marketing pipeline was developed with press releases translated and distributed into 12 languages.
  • Extensive metrics were collated for both this conference and previous ones
  • An extensive wiki tracking the process for running foss4g for use in future conferences

Education Report 2009

Geodata Report 2009

Incubation Report 2009

Journal Report 2009

Marketing Report 2009

Systems Report 2009

Website Report 2009

Software Project Reports

deegree

Key Accomplishments

  • 2009 was the most important year of deegree v.3 development (AKA deegree3). The module structure has been improved and made stable, configuration has been designed and implemented, the build mechanism set up. Nightly builds have been made available in August [more TBD]
  • A first pre-release of deegree's GIS Desktop application named "iGeoDesktop" was released in March
  • The fourth deegree day successfully took place in Bonn in May, together with a local OpenStreetMap outreach activity. There were about 120 participants and we even Steve Coast dropped in (http://deegreeday.deegree.org/archive).
  • The first deegree 2.3 release candidate was published in November, after quite some improvements in the release process and result. The package included pre-configured and ready-to-run versions of WMS, WFS, WCS, CSW, WPVS, WPS and iGeoPortal. Those were at the same time made available on http://demo.deegree.org/.
  • Outreach: deegree was presented at FOSSGIS (March in Hannover, Germany), deegree day (May in Bonn, Germany), AGIT (July in Salzburg, Austria), INTERGEO (September in Karlsruhe, Germany), FOSS4G (October in Sydney, Australia)

Areas for Improvement

  • Extend and improve documentation, create tutorials
  • Increase involvement of the community
  • Increase the number of contributors (code)
  • Reduce the number of pre-releases within one release cycle

Opportunities to Help

  • Test release candidates at an early stage
  • Provide or improve documentation (e.g. QA by native speakers)
  • Contribute to tutorial production process
  • Actively contribute to deegree 3 development
  • Share experiences with deegree

Outlook for 2010

  • OSGeo incubation process to be finalized
  • Though we made some progress in release management, there are still issues to improve.
  • deegree 2.3 stable to be released in early 2010

FDO Report 2009

Template:GDAL/OGR Report 2009

GeoNetwork opensource Report 2009

GEOS Report 2009

GeoTools Report 2009

This has been a very productive year for the GeoTools project during which we really changed gears to focus on stability and documentation. This is a new direction compared to our previous emphasis on standards research. It has been accompanied by the departure of some long-standing members of our development team and the arrival of new members.

We promised productivity let us see how well the GeoTools team has delivered:

  • New website http://geotools.org/
  • Audit and cleanup of existing modules - thanks Andrea and OpenGeo
  • Strong Documentation for new Developers. An amazing amount of work building up friendly visual intro material - thanks Michael
  • Application Schema module ready for production - thanks Perth CSIRO team
  • New Project Management Committee members - welcome Ben, Christian and Michael
  • Many new modules:
    • the jdbc-ng (next generation) community module went from inception through our community process into production this year. Thanks to Justin and OpenGeo for this complete rewrite of our database access facilities.
    • the swing module was reborn to support our new visual tutorial material
    • the process module was picked up and improved with some great raster to vector functionality - thanks Michael
    • the JPEG2000 plugin was added - thanks Simone
  • New features:
    • the renderer now supports geometry transformations (such as buffering and extrusion) prior to drawing
    • high quality icon rendering from SVG - thanks Jonathan
    • wfs 1.1 support - thanks Gabriel
  • Successful tutorial at FOSS4G 2009 - thanks Jody and Michael
  • GeoTools 2.5 series issued six stable releases this year.
  • GeoTools 2.6 took over the reins as the stable release at year end

We have a lot of great ideas for the new year and we are excited to be working with some enthusiastic and creative new contributors such as Jonathan, who is pushing interesting rendering concepts into the mix such as "unit of measure" distances (so you can finally buffer 5km around a data set), and Stephan has been introducing all kinds of useful ideas from AtlasStyler as well as contributing great patches.

Finally, we also started to investigate the issue of 3D Geometry together with folks from the deegree team. Thanks to CSIRO for setting up this opportunity, and to the deegree team for taking out from their busy release schedule to collaborate with us.

GRASS GIS Report 2009

Key Accomplishments

* the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period

  • Several GRASS 6.4.0 release candidates published which includes the new graphical user interface, native MS-Windows support new functionality and many fixes and improvements
  • New winGRASS 6.4.0RCsvn stand-alone package
  • Google Summer of Code 2009 participation with two projects
  • Start of GRASS 7 development with many new features

Participation in conferences

Areas for Improvement

  • any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help
  • develop migration guides for public administration
  • develop a sponsorship program

Opportunities to Help

  • list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report

Outlook for 2010

  • this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2009 :)

gvSIG

Key Accomplishments

  • the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period
to be done

Areas for Improvement

  • any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help
to be done

Opportunities to Help

  • list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report
to be done

Outlook for 2010

  • this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2009 :)
to be done

Mapbender

  • Contact name: Christoph Baudson

Key Accomplishments

  • More transparent decision making on road map. Road maps are now created regularly for each quarter, with at most three items, devs vote up-front for items on mailing list and discuss via IRC
  • interweaving Mapbender client side with jQuery. This results in more stability, less and concise code, better performance and user experience (for example slippy WMS map)
  • relying on jQuery UI for creating widgets like datatables or or dialogs. Results in less code, easier development of new functionality, better user experience, better customization with jQuery UI CSS framework theme roller
  • creation of a core JavaScript API
  • created a foundation for technical documentation
  • two successful GSoC projects, one student is now a regular committer, a GSoC student from 2008 returned
  • a lot of great code sprints, like weekends with 10-15 devs!
  • regular IRC meetings, we meet Mondays and I believe we never missed a date last year! About 5 attendees average
  • Adoption of Mapbender has broadened. Focus is on large infrastructures and distributed SDI management. Some Examples:

Areas for Improvement

  • we didn't succeed in showing Mapbender's qualities to OSGeo or a wider audience in general. We need to be more confident in marketing, especially outside of Germany. Maybe FOSS4G in Barcelona will be an opportunity.
  • unit testing didn't take off as we hoped it would.
  • documentation is not as complete as we wanted it to be.
  • the installation and update process has been improved, but is still not as easy as we wanted it to be.
  • more consistent work flow of administration interfaces
  • due to large refactoring last year backwards compatibility suffered a little and updates were tricky. Be patient with us, we learned a lot and this year will be much smoother.
  • Redesign splash screen and portal front end
  • Modularize authentication code, potentially use GeoPrisma "Checkers".
  • Implement deployment of JavaScript code for inclusion into other web sites (Widgets/Apps/Mashups)

Opportunities to Help

  • volunteers to maintain documentation, user manuals, tutorials.
  • more community feedback, we are curious about what OSGeo folks think about Mapbender
  • we could need some input on client side (JS) unit testing.
  • people with UI design experience and advanced CSS knowledge
  • as long as we do not have enough unit tests, we need volunteers to do manual testing
  • we could use a financial boost to address technical debt.

Outlook for 2010

  • Rely more on other (OSGeo) software, reduce Mapbender core
    • we want to get closer to OpenLayers, we looked at Mapstraction and maybe this will be a good way to align our API to the OpenLayers API
    • maybe use server side code from GeoPrisma or MapFish
    • create interface to Geonetwork
    • integration of an SVG lib like RaphaelJS
  • Implement permanent portal as OSGeo service metadata library/repository/bucket back end
  • Reduce technical debt
    • rock solid documentation and stable API
    • unit testing
  • Enthusiasm in representing Mapbender at some international fairs

MapBuilder Report 2009

MapGuide Report 2009

MapServer

  • Contact name: Steve Lime

Key Accomplishments

the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period

  • MapServer 5.4 released in April 2009:
    • Notable features and enhancements include:
      • MS RFC 30: Support for WMS 1.3.0
      • MS RFC 40: Label text alignment and wrapping
      • MS RFC 44: Restore URL modification of mapfiles to pre-5.0 levels
      • MS RFC 47: Move IGNORE_MISSING_DATA to run-time configuration
      • MS RFC 48: GEOTRANSFORM Geometry operations
      • MS RFC 49: Symbology, Labeling, and Cartography Improvements
      • MS RFC 56: Improved security relative to untrusted directories and mapfiles
    • Other notable enhancements include:
      • improved polygon label placement
      • re-write of much of the PostGIS driver code
  • MapServer 5.6 released in December 2009
    • Notable features and enhancements include:
      • MS RFC 51: XML Mapfile schema and XSLT (see http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/XMLMapfiles)
      • MS RFC 52: One-pass query processing, making WFS queries on database backends much much faster
      • MS RFC 55: Improve control of output resolution, allows printing maps at printer resolution using a mapfile defined for screen resolution
      • MS RFC 57: Labeling enhancements: ability to repeat labels along a line/multiline
    • Other notable enhancements include:
      • Performance optimizations:
        • Load all GDAL image bands in one pass for faster processing
        • Optimized access to very large shapefiles
      • Several enhancements/fixes to OGC Web Services specs support
      • Several enhancements/fixes to all flavors of MapScript
  • Several releases for older versions tied to security improvements
    • The MapServer PSC worked with several 3rd parties who initially identified vulnerabilities
  • Most of the MapServer PSC participated in the first C-tribe code sprint in Toronto.
  • The MapServer project participated in the web mapping server shoot out at FOSS4G 2009.
  • MapServer had a couple of Google summer of code students, our first ever.
  • Special congratulations to PSC member Daniel Morissette on winning the 2009 Sol Katz award- much deserved!

Areas for Improvement

any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognize need some help

  • Keeping documentation up-to-date with development remains a challenge
    • Content is spread between the new website and the MapServer trac wiki and it is unclear when to transition between the two
  • Google Summer of Code: continue to try and attract more students
  • Work to attract additional developer talent to the project. We've been pretty stable for the last couple of years.
  • Cleanup bug backlog (550+ open bugs), and triage new bugs more effectively.

Opportunities to Help

list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report

  • General website and documentation maintenance.
  • Although much progress has been made we need to add more language support to the documentation.
  • New coders always welcome, a good way to start is by contributing bug reports and patches.
  • Experienced users can contribute to the release process by testing the betas and release candidates and reporting their results.

Outlook for 2010

this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2010 :)

  • MapServer 6.0 to be release sometime in mid-2010.
    • Planned enhancements include:
      • Final release of the pluggable renderer API
      • Mapfile support for object references
  • MS4W 3.0 in early 2010
  • Strong presence at the New York City in February where we will focus on 6.0 release features and performance improvements.
  • New MapServer logo and website design.
  • Deployment of multi-language documentation, english and german to start.

MetaCRS Report 2009

OpenLayers Report 2009

OSSIM 2009 Year in Review

submitted by Mark Lucas

The OSSIM project has now been up and running over a decade and continues to rapidly evolve.  The focus of the core OSSIM library is on satellite and aerial image processing and advanced photogrammetry.  Functions in the library essentially take what the camera sees and transforms it into a map.  OSSIM is in use in many international language translationground stations and processing centers.  It is often used as part of larger systems such as Opticks and the Orfeo toolbox.  A number corporations and government agencies have integrated OSSIM into their ground station processing solutions.  RadiantBlue Technologies, SPADAC, SAIC, L3-Communications, the Naval Research Labs, the South African Center for Remote Sensing, and the US Department of Defense are just a few examples.

Ossimcodehistory.png

Figure 1.  A historic profile of the source code in the OSSIM repository

The core developers and contributors to the OSSIM project are typically professional software engineers providing commercial and government solutions and engineering students.  At the end of 2009, there are 9 developers with commit permissions in the repository.  OSSIM successfully graduated from OSGeo incubation this year.

A number of additional libraries, tools, applications, and solutions are included in the OSSIM distribution.  The command line tools are typically used for simple tasks or scripting workflows.  OssimPlanet is an accurate 3D geospatial viewer and collaboration client.  It combines OSSIM and OpenSceneGraph to provide 3D visualization.   ImageLinker is a prototyping / production tool that was originally developed to test the functionality of the OSSIM library.  ImageLinker can construct and manipulate complex "image chains" for complex geospatial products.

As the OSSIM library has matured, the core developers have focused more of their efforts on integrating higher level solutions to government agencies by combining with other open source projects. OMAR is a solution that integrates OSSIM, GDAL, OpenLayers, MapServer, Postgres/Postgis, and GRAILS into a powerful provisioning and processing system for satellite ground stations. The OMAR solution is currently being deployed in various ground stations to rapidly expose and process imagery in archives. At the end of 2009, an OMAR site was established at telascience to support the Haiti relief efforts. Government funding for OMAR development and deployment supports the day to day activities of many of the OSSIM core developers.

The development team is currently looking at the OpenGeo project suite to add a number of new features.

THIS IS A DRAFT REPORT

Quantum GIS

  • Contact name: Gary Sherman


Key Accomplishments

Releases

The year 2009 was a busy one for the QGIS team, with five major releases:

  • QGIS began the year by releasing the long anticipated 1.0 version ('Kore') on January 10, 2009. This version provided a stable API from which to develop custom solutions in Python or C++.
  • In May the team released QGIS 1.0.2 (stable release) and QGIS 1.1.0 (unstable release). The stable release is a continuation of the long term support 1.0.x series while 1.1.0 includes new features and is considered stable enough for production work.
  • Version 1.2 ('Daphnis') was released September 1, 2009 with improvements in editing, GRASS shell, symbology, and many new plugins.
  • Version 1.3 ('Mimas') followed shortly after on September 20, 2009 and included the OSM plugin and additional fixes.
  • While all but packaging was completed in December, Version 1.4 ('Enceladus') was officially released the first week of January 2010 and contains nearly 30 new features and around 200 bug fixes.

Developer Meetings

The QGIS team had two "hackfests" in 2009 which resulted in significant collaboration and facilitated the ambitious release schedule:

Bug Hunt

In addition, a bug hunt was held in Moscow in December 2009:

  • A group of 14 users spent about three hours testing QGIS and another three is discussion of various topics
  • Around 90 reproducible bugs were found during period right before the bug hunt and during the event
  • More than a half of them were considered valid and reported

Google Summer of Code

Under the OSGeo umbrella, QGIS participated in the Summer of Code resulting in improved feature labeling that was incorporated into the latest releases.

Areas for Improvement

  • QGIS has been continually improving its development process.
  • The project continues to look for talent in the areas of coding, translation, documentation, and content management
  • Release testing can be improved to ensure that QGIS is of the highest quality possible
  • Management of user-contributed plugins needs to be improved to ensure long-term maintenance

Opportunities to Help

Release testers are needed to develop a test plan and do comprehensive testing of all features prior to a release.

Outlook for 2010

QGIS continues to evolve at a phenomenal rate. In 2010 we expect to see even more Python plugins that expand and enhance the capability of the core software. Work on version 1.5 is well underway and the project is staged to have another successful year full of quality releases.

SoC Report 2009

Local Chapter Reports

Africa Chapter Report 2009

OSGeo Aust NZ Logo.png

OSGeo Australia / New Zealand

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2009
  • Contact name: Bruce Bannerman


Key Accomplishments

FOSS4G-2009

FOSS4G-2009 dominated AustNZ activities for 2009. We had a strong team of local volunteers from Australia and New Zealand as well as from the International OSGeo family.

We were excited to see our international colleagues travel to Sydney for the event and to introduce FOSS4G to the Australian community.

There was definitely an exciting vibe in the air, and there has been much follow up interest from within Australia.

It was a surreal experience for a number of the Local Organising Committee who had been dealing via phone and email on a daily basis for two years to finally meet face to face at the Sydney Convention Centre.

Local contributions were made to the Arramagong Live DVD which was provided to all delegates at the conference (http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc_Quick_Start)

OSGeo-AustNZ List

We now have 123 subscribers to the OSGeo-AustNZ list.

This number includes a few people who have multiple email addresses subscribed.


Victorian Government Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data

Bruce Bannerman and Cameron Shorter prepared a submission for Australia's Victorian Government's Parliamentary Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data on behalf of OSGeo-AustNZ in August 2008.

The Inquiry released its final report, citing the OSGeo-AustNZ submission at a number of places. The report was very favourable towards open access to data.


Presence at conferences

    • 2009-6, Canberra - Autodesk Australia (thanks Milton) kindly allowed OSGeo-AustNZ to share their stand at the successful Spatial@Gov conference. Cameron Shorter presented on Geospatial Open Source.
    • 2009-08? Brisbane - Lightening presentation on Open Source (and Lisasoft) by Jody Garnett to the CRCSI, and distribution of 250 Arramagong GIS Live DVDs to delegates.
    • 2009-10, Sydney - Tyler allowed us to share the OSGeo booth at FOSS4G-2009. http://2009.foss4g.org

Areas for Improvement

  • We have still not incorporated as a legal entity.

This needs to be addressed. There is some debate and a few ideas, but little effort to step forward and help move things forward.

  • Most of the work by the local chapter is still being done by a few key people. We need to find a way to encourage more involvement.


Outlook for 2010

  • There is a lot of momentum building for the use of open source spatial software in the Australian and New Zealand regions:
  • Local groups are starting to self organise and hold regular get togethers, e.g.:
    • Melbourne Pub Nights; and
    • Brisbane user get togethers.
  • It is anticipated that these could evolve in a number of ways:
    • regular show and tell events where organisations hold regular site visits to see what their peers are doing with FOSS4G;
    • Code Sprints to Introduce FOSS4G (aka Developer Advocacy). This was an idea initiated by Jody Garnett at the latest Melbourne Pub Night; and
    • general FOSS4G Advocacy.

Brazilian Chapter

Key Accomplishments

  • Geolivre 2009 - The most important FOSS GIS conference in Brazil. The 2009 edition, we have more than 150 attendees in "real presence" and more than 1.500 attendees on Internet.
  • Unofficial OSGeo meeting at Latinoware 2009.
  • Unofficial OSGeo meeting at FISL (International Free Software Forum) 2009. The FISL is the most important FOSS event in Latin America, with more than 7.000 users.
  • Voting Members Definition.
  • Definition of a coordination group.
  • New objetctives and mission for the chapter.
  • Creation of workgroups.

Areas for Improvement

  • Chapter organization.
  • More activity.

Local Projects - FOSS GIS

  • I3Geo
  • Prefeitura Livre - Open Source solution to manage municipal services/utilities integrated FOSS GIS components.

Contributions to OSGeo Projects

Opportunities to Help

  • More meetings and events in Brazil.

Outlook for 2010

  • Crate a visual identity for the chapter.
  • Solidify the Brazilian Chapter.
  • Promote work experience exchance from members.

British Columbia Chapter Report 2009

California Chapter

  • Contact name: Alex Mandel (Davis, CA),
                          Landon Blake (Stockton, CA),
                          Ragi Burhum (San Francisco, CA)
                          

Key Accomplishments


Areas for Improvement

  • As a very large area geographically we are encouraging more local interaction via unofficial subchapters.
  • While we have a strong presence in Northern California it would be great to bring together more people in the Los Angeles and San Diego regions.

Opportunities to Help

  • Always looking for more events to go to.
  • Looking for help designing and administering award to government agencies in California that promote free and open access to geospatial data.
  • Looking for programmers to assist with software development projects hosted by Chapter.

Outlook for 2010

The growth of mobile platforms like Android and iPhone has also caused a huge increase for the need of geospatial libraries and server technologies.
Since the Bay Area has huge activity of startups with very talented people with low cash flow, it is a perfect incubator for adoption of OSGeo technologies.
Several of the current startup companies that are doing anything related to geo have started using software like PostGIS.

Interestingly enough, Unconferences and local meetup groups have proven to be very effective at producing follow up e-mails with questions about Open Source
GIS technologies. In fact, for these type of events, it is not uncommon to present to a group of 10-80 developers who are all interested and flabbergasted that they
did not know that such open source technologies even existed.

Since the mobile application market keeps growing, it is unquestionable that OSGeo adoption in the Bay Area will follow suit.

Cascadia Chapter Report 2009

China Chapter

Key Accomplishments

  • Enhanced OSGeo China Website (in Chinese language).
  • Promote local OSGeo activites every month at OSGeo China Event.
  • 4 local sponsors, ESRI China, 3SNews, Sun China ERI and InfoQ China.
  • Organized "Monthly OSGeo Lecture" at Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Science.
  • Finish OSGeo China Annual Report at FOSS4G 2009 conference.
  • Invite Prof.Venka from OSGeo Japan to give lecture at OSGeo China.

Areas for Improvement

  • Open Source GIS document and software localization for Chinese developers.
  • Give lectures at local universities and promote the reputation of OSGeo.
  • Provide technical help at OSGeo China mail alias for the OS GIS users in China.

Opportunities to Help

  • Launch local sponsorship, which could help us to keep regular activities and visible.
  • Become sponsor of the China Chapter and support local activities in financial or event goods and materials.

Outlook for 2010

  • Organize off line activities and lectures for students and researchers.
  • Enrich the local OSGeo China web site.
  • Communicate with OSGeo local chapters in Asia.
  • Contributes to OSGeo event such as FOSS4G conference.
  • Organize annual local meeting according to the form of FOSS4G Tokyo and FOSS4G Osaka.

Finland Chapter Report 2009

The OSGeo Finland Chapter was established in the summer of 2008 so 2009 was the first full year of existence.

We have an email list and wiki page provided by OSGeo. These have, however, been used very little.

The big event in 2009 was a half day mini conference organized jointly with ProGIS. The conference was in April 21 on the campus of Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University School of Science and Technology) and it was attended by more than 50 people. There were four presentations in the conference, which gave an overview of OSGeo and FLOSS4G, the free web-stack, WPS, and the role of free software in what ESRI does. The feedback of the conference was positive.

Reported January 21, 2010 by Ari Jolma

Francophone Local Chapter Report for 2009

  • Contact name: Yves Jacolin

Key Accomplishments

  • We translated & published QGIS documentation release 1.0.0, and began translating QGIS release 1.4.0 doc,
  • We signed an agreement with the French national mapping agency IGN to promote and create common projects,
  • We assisted the French OpenStreetMap community importing data from the public sector,
  • We worked on the translation of OpenLayers documentation. We're currently at the proof-reader step,
  • We celebrated our first birthday as a Legal Association

Areas for Improvement

  • We need people to help translating documentation & writing information for the future OSGeo-fr website
  • We need more people to advocate OSGeo and Free and Open Source software and data to the francophone world! (but there are already some, out there ;-)

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2010

  • Stronger contact and link with the French OpenStreetMap community - act as a Legal Association for them, if they ask us to. Discussions are underway on this possibility.
  • Incentive to free more geodata from the public sector, with an eye on OpenStreetMap,
  • Create and develop the OSGeo-fr website,
  • Open Source village at the "Rencontre SIG La Lettre" Tradeshow with conferences and OSGeo-fr booth,
  • "RMLL 2010" Tradeshow: a booth and several presentations to expect.

The FOSSGIS e.V. (registered association) has been approved as OSGeo local chapter D-A-CH at the end of 2008. Therefore in 2009 one of the main focuses was to establish the FOSSGIS e.V. as local chapter D-A-CH and to merge the structures to integrate the new function into the FOSSGIS e.V., existing since 2000. The following listing sketches the activities 2009:

Host and organizer of the established FOSSGIS conference

  • FOSSGIS 2009 (2009/03/17-2009/03/19) in Hannover with approx. 500 participants, a bunch of exhibitors, hands-on workshops and speeches
  • Developing a concept to integrate the OpenStreetMap-community into the FOSSGIS-conference to make it the OSM-conference for the German language community and to connect the OSM-community with OSGeo activities.
  • Planning FOSSGIS 2010 conference in Osnabrück (2010/03/02-2010/03/05)

Participation and coordination of OSGeo presence at various conferences and exhibitions

  • LinuxTag (2009/06/23-2009/03/27)
  • AGIT
  • Intergeo (2009/09/22-2009/09/24) (coordination of community part of OSGeo Park)

Financial support of various code sprints and developer meetings

Launching own Webserver to host the associations own

Improvments of profile and PR

  • New FOSSGIS-logo to solicit the new name (FOSSGIS, formerly known as GRASS Anwender Vereinigung) and the new tasks of FOSSGIS e.V.
  • Development of a booth-concept and partly implementation (already tested on Intergeo 2009)

Projects of lc D-A-CH (abstract)

  • Further development of GISlive - FOSSGIS' own LiveDVD project used on conference for workshops and as give away
  • Redesgn of FreeGIS-portal - relaunch coming soon in 2010
  • Promoting OSM-community by being contract partner for donation of data and IT-services

Members of FOSSGIS e.V./lc D-A-CH

  • Increase of members of FOSSGIS e.V. as lc D-A-CH about 50%. In a absolute numbers from 60 to 90 including private, institutional and corporate memberships

Outlook 2010

  • FOSSGIS-conference 2010
  • FOSS4G in Barcelona
  • INTERGEO, AGIT
  • Connect local working groups with OSGeo internationals
  • Increase donations
  • Work in preparation for own office (implementation after 2010 ;-)

Greek Language Chapter

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2009
  • Contact name: Dimitris Kotzinos
  • The OSGeo Greek Local Chapter was initiated only in November 2007. During 2009 membership grew and a new mailing list under OSGeo (thanks Arnulf and Tyler) was initiated.

Key Accomplishments

  • Two main events were planned and successfully carried out:
    • Interoperability in Geographic Information Day
      • When: April 3rd, 2009
      • Where: Ledra Marriott Hotel, Athens, Greece
      • Co-organized: OGC (www.opengeospatial.org), HellasGI (www.hellasgi.gr)
      • The event was highly successful with over 90 participants who stayed for the whole duration of the event. Many Greek and internation experts presented issues evolving around the main theme. The repetition of th event was highly suggested by all participants.
    • Open Source Web Mapping Workshop
      • When: June 20th, 2009
      • Where: NTUA, Athens, Greece
      • Co-organized: HellasGI (www.hellasgi.gr)
      • Organized during the Greek Open Source Developers Conference. Arnulf Christl was the invited speaker. The wealth of Open Source solution including MapServer, Mapbender and PostGIS. About 30 people attended the workshop.
  • Greek Local Chapter Mailing List initiated. Info available at: http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/greek

Areas for Improvement

  • We still do not have the participation in OSGeo we expected. We need to intensify the efforts to increase the membership and the overall awareness.

Opportunities to Help

  • In the future we will definitely need some speakers for national FOSS or just simple GIS events.
  • We would also like to demonstrate some cases of successful use of FOSS GIS by the public sector to local government officials.
  • We would like to plan some demo classes on FOSS GIS for students in universities and how these can be integrated in their curricula in order to show that we can achieve the exact same educational result.

Outlook for 2010

  • We should plan three (3) or more national events this year, depending on availability and funding.
  • We would also be very interested in having the ability to apply for funding as a chapter/organization and we would like to seek help/information from other local chapters that do or plan to do the same.

India Chapter Report 2009

Israel Chapter Report 2009


Italian Chapter

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2009
  • Contact name: Massimo di Stefano User:Epifanio

Key Accomplishments

  • Substantial grassroots activities (numerous events in one year, following the numerous events in the previous years)
  • Rapdly increase in registered members (+33%)
  • Legal Action towards ISTAT (with ASSOLI), then translated to committee for evaluation of geospatial requirements
  • QGIS (and GRASS) funding initiative (see qgis hackfest 2009 in Vienna)
  • New GFOSS.it server hosted by Regione Toscana (for wiki, main web site, and sample data sets)
  • Improved Relationship to OpenStreetMap community.
  • Great succes for the second edition of the GFOSS day held in Bolzano in November (approx. 260 participants).
  • During the year we had also a GFOSS.it partecipation writing articles for "Rivista Geomedia", with quasi-monthly contributions. This is currently the only hard copy publication on the GIS market in Italy [16]


GFOSS.it-related events in 2009 :

  • 10th Italian GRASS/GFOSS meeting [1]
  • 4th Workshop Open Source, Free Software and Open formats in archaeological research [2] (*)
  • GFOSS.it and OSGEO sponsorship at the Matera's barcamp [3]
  • Bettersoftware Conference [4]
  • First National Meeting about OpenStreetMap : OSMit [5]
  • Italian conference about free-libre software - Bologna CONFSL [6]
  • Portofino mapping party [7]
  • OSGeo Hacking event Bolsena [8] (*)
  • Dolomity Mapping Party [9]
  • Contribute to the FOSSFG live-dvd project [10]
  • FOSS4G - Sydney [11]]
  • ITN 09 "Infrastructure Telematic & Navigation" [12]
  • 2nd Meeting of Free Software for GIS (SASIG) Portugal [13]
  • QGIS Hackfest - Vienna [14]
  • 2nd GFOSS Day [15]
  • Google Summer of Code partecipation with 4 student-projects approved [17-20] (*)

(*) informal gfoss.it presence

Areas for Improvement :

  • Opportunities to consolidate relationships with other associations with focus on open source software (not only GEO-)


Outlook for 2009 :

  • The new board will be elected in February 2010
  • Interest in providing additional momentum in Italy, and in connection with other European chapters, towards FOSS4G 2010


LINK :


Japan Chapter

  • Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2009
  • Contact name: Toru Mori

Key Accomplishments

  • Held the 4th annual conference in November in Tokyo and Osaka, attended 150 active people.

Invited Arnulf Christl, president of OSGeo Foundation, to give them a speech and promoted OSGeo and its community. Chris Holmes, Eugenio Realini Gerald Fenoy and many local speakers gave speech.

Held 4 hands-on sessions (pgRouting, MapServer, GeoServer and QuantumGIS) both in Tokyo and Osaka.

In this event, we organized collaboration with other “geo-friendly” communities such as “GeoMedia (geo mash up folks)”, Open Street Map Japan and Android.

  • 5 local sponsors, Osaka-city University, Autodesk Japan, Ouyougijyutsu, Mapconcielge and Orkney.
  • Organized various community activities such as
    • FOSS4G meeting at annual ecology society meeting in Iwate Japan
    • "Osaka mini event" in September. Eugenio Realini, Nicolas Bozon and Naoki Ueda give speech
    • QGIS hands on at National Institute for Agro-Environmental Science in Tsukuba Japan
    • Launch QGIS localization project
    • FOSS4G session at annual GIS society meeting in Niigata Japan
    • Support and promote Japanese version of "GRASS GIS book" (Markus & Helena)
    • Launch MEXT funded project which promotes use of satellite imagery by using FOSS4G tools such as GRASS and QGIS
  • Promoted OSGeo.JP activities to international OSGeo community.
  • Organized local board committee regularly.

Areas for Improvement

  • Enhanced local website (in Japanese language).
  • Increased registored local chapter members.

Opportunities to Help

  • Join and express your opinions to our local mailing lists.
  • Contribute us translated materials of OSGeo.org pages.
  • Become sponsor of the Japan Chapter and support local activities in financial.

Outlook for 2010

  • Enrich the local OSGeo web site.
  • Increase number of local mailing lists subscribers from 170(current) to 300.
  • 5rd annual conference (currently scheduled in November).
  • Organize off line activities such as face to face meetings and beer parties!

Korean Chapter Report 2009

New Mexico Chapter Report 2009

Ottawa Chapter

Key Accomplishments

  • held meetings ever 1-2 months, which included presentations to share experience in particular projects/software, and social/networking to learn what others are doing, job opportunities, opinions on where the community is going, etc.
  • WIDE range of participants, including programmers, users, experts, novices, educators, students, program managers, people from government, non-profits, large and small firms; continuing to see new faces
  • local chapter's mailing list continues to be a valuable resource, sharing variety of useful information

Areas for Improvement

  • number of actual presentations at meetings dipped in 2009 compared to previous years

Opportunities to Help

  • presentation ideas, and especially volunteer presenters, are sorely needed
  • ideas, and more importantly volunteers to help make it happen, are needed for other activities

Outlook for 2010

  • some great ideas have been voiced in the past year about outreach activities, collaborations with other groups, etc. Getting these ideas off the ground will require volunteers, of course, and we also encourage other groups to contact us if they have ideas for cooperation.

Poland Local Chapter

Key Accomplishments

Areas for Improvement

  • insert some text

Opportunities to Help

  • insert some text

Outlook for 2010

  • OSGeo projects info pages in polish

Quebec Local Chapter Report for 2009

  • Contact name: Daniel Morissette (for the Quebec Local Chapter Steering Committee)

Key Accomplishments

  • Held regular local meetings around the province with 2-3 15 minute presentations each time:
  • OSGeo presence in the April 30 and September 29 AGMQ conferences where ~50% of the talks were on the topic of free and open source geomatics (More info...)
  • Open Source track in the Geomatics 2009 program on Wednesday October 21
  • 45 minutes presentation on some geospatial open source projets made by different members of OSGeo-qc at CLLAP 2009 on November 5
  • Added 2 new members to steering committee for a 2 year term as was initially planned in 2008. The current steering committee members for 2009-2010 are:
    • Daniel Morissette (2008-2010)
    • Thierry Badard (2008-2010)
    • Nicolas Gignac (2008-2010)
    • Simon Mercier (2009-2011)
    • Martin Fafard (2009-2011)

Areas for Improvement

  • We need to keep the momentum, there is growing interest for Open Source Geospatial software (and data) in Quebec, we had a great start in 2008-2009 and need to continue to take advantage of that
  • The big challenge of 2010 will be the planning of the June 2010 event

Opportunities to Help

  • Rendez-vous OSGeo Quebec 2010 offers lots of opportunities for people interested in contributing:
    • Join the organizing committee
    • Answer the upcoming call for presentations and share your work with your peers
    • Help with specific tasks
    • Register for the event and join us in Saguenay in June!

Outlook for 2010

Romanian Local Chapter

Key Accomplishments

  • Visibility at conferences and workshops:
    • 22-23 May 2009: presentation entitled "Bucharest air quality management system build entirely with FLOSS software" at eLiberatica 2009 (http://www.eliberatica.ro/2009), in Bucharest - Romania.
    • 16-17 October 2009: general presentation at 17th GIS Users Conference, Iasi - Romania.
    • 20-23 October 2009: poster presentation of geo-spatial.org activities at FOSS4G2009, Sydney - Australia.

Areas for Improvement

  • Present the FOSS benefits to companies involved in the geospatial business here in Romania

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2010

  • In partnership with the Faculty of Geography - University Babes - Bolyai, Cluj Napoca, we are organizing the second edition of an seminar on free and open source geospatial solutions. The event will take place between 16-16 of April 2010 and will be hosted by the Faculty of Geography, in Cluj Napoca.
  • Regular meetings during the whole year
  • Become an official local chapter
  • Publish more articles and datasets on geo-spatial.org
  • Attract as many people is possible to FOSS4G2010

South America Chapter Report 2009

Spanish Local Chapter

Key Accomplishments

  • Presence in key events in the Spanish Language geomatic world. The Foundation starts to be well knonw.
  • Give support to the Foundation projects mainly in the mailing list.
  • Give support to the FOSS4G LOC Comittee.

Areas for Improvement

  • Libro SIG (the Free GIS Book) is still one accomplishement that slips from our hands.
  • The Spanish Local Chapter Board started with many initiatives, but it still has to improve it capacity to motivate the community

Opportunities to Help

  • insert some text

Outlook for 2010

  • insert some text

Taiwan Chapter Report 2009

Template:Thailand Chapter Report 2009

Twin Cities Chapter Annual Report 2009

United Kingdom Local Chapter Report for 2009

  • Contact name: Jo Cook

Key Accomplishments

  • 2009 was the year in which the UK Local Chapter was officially recognised.
  • Membership of our mailing list has grown to 80 members, and we have our own website at http://www.osgeo.org/uk
  • In 2009 we co-organised OSGIS 2009, the UK's first open source GIS conference, with the Centre for Geospatial Sciences at the University of Nottingham. This was a big success that we hope to repeat in 2010.

Areas for Improvement

  • We need people to organise small-scale get-togethers such as lunch-time talks all over the country to keep the momentum going, so we don't rely too much on one or two people speaking at national conferences.
  • We need to set the local chapter up as a voluntary organisation. This gives us the option to have a bank account and raise money for promotion, printing publicity materials and transport to and from events.

Opportunities to Help

Outlook for 2010

Sponsors (2009)

1Spatial Report 2009

Astun Technology Report 2009

Autodesk Report 2009

This year's highlight for us has been the birth of GeoPrisma as an open source (modified BSD) project. After teaming up with the great folks at MapGears and Nippour Geomatik and leading the project as an open project amongst ourselves, we officially released GeoPrisma to the community just before the FOSS4G conference. Geoprisma builds upon the OpenLayers/MapFish/GeoExt stack and for that reason we are very much looking forward to enhance GeoPrisma with the novelties to appear down in the stack over the course of the coming year.

Two items are worth mentioning from our point of view: first, we are thrilled by the MapFish project starting the OSGeo incubation process. Second, we see a very high potential in GeoExt ux's (user extensions), many of which are lying around in various sandboxes ready to jump in trunk where they'll be ready for inclusion in GeoPrisma. 2010 should be that of full-featured web mapping for us. We believe the view of a true web GIS is very near with the great stack of OSGeo projects we build and depend on!

Camptocamp Report 2009

FirstBaseSolutions Report 2009

GeoCat Report 2009

IGN Report 2009

INPE Report 2009

INGRES Report 2009

LizardTech has been a sponsor of OSGeo since its inception and we continue to be a proud supporter of the organization and its initiatives.

LizardTech helped out OSGeo in several ways in 2009.

  • We continue to host the meetings of CUGOS (The Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source), the Seattle-based chapter of OSGeo. Every month, ten to twenty people from industry and academia attend our meetings.
  • LizardTech's own mpg concluded his series of columns for GeoConnexions magazine. Twenty-five articles of over 1000 words each were written by OSGeo members and friends over the past few years.
  • LizardTech was a sponsor for the Toronto Code Sprint and sent two of its engineers to the event. We look forward to sponsoring and attending the 2010 event in New York.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, LizardTech contracted with OSGeo developers to fix bugs or add features in OSGeo's projects. Our products rely heavily on open source libraries under the hood, and we continue to find open source to be a cost-effective approach to managing areas outside our core competencies.

We look forward to another year of collaboration and growth.


Michael P. Gerlek

Director of Engineering

LizardTech

Ordnance Survey Report 2009

PCI Geomatics Report 2009

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