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.

See the OSGeo page to find out more about the recipients and about Sol Katz

https://www.osgeo.org/community/awards/

Recipients

2023: Howard Butler - Developer of PDAL, GDAL, PROJ, GEOS, and longtime supporter of the C/C++ stack
2022: Sandro Santilli - Developer of PostGIS, GEOS, librtoppo, and longtime vision for being Open
2021: Malena Libman - Bringing so many communities and groups together, and empowering them, leaving a worldwide legacy
2020: Anita Graser - QGIS advocate, developer, and leader, providing so much useful material to users
2019 Even Rouault - dedication to so many projects including GDAL, PROJ, and many others
2018: Astrid Emde - leadership and longtime efforts for OSGeo and FOSSGIS communities
2017: Andrea Aime - GeoServer and GeoTools core developer
2016: Jeff McKenna - longtime passion and leadership spreading FOSS4G and OSGeo around the world (Announcement)
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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Katz

OSGeo Public Site: https://www.osgeo.org/community/awards/

Process

Put out a call for nominations fairly widely on appropriate social networks and forums
Nominations are sent privately to solkatzaward at lists dot osgeo dot org (public nominations will be discarded).
Committee selects awardee
Prepare plaque and tokens of appreciation
Present in FOSS4G closing plenary
Update this page with results
Create announcement (mailing lists, websites, etc)

2024 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 2024 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software.

The Sol Katz Award for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the FOSS4G community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.

Solomon 'Sol' Katz was an early pioneer of FOSS4G 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 FOSS4G 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 .

Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to solkatzaward at lists dot osgeo dot org with a description of the reasons for this nomination (after sending, please wait for the moderator to accept your message). Nominations will be accepted until end-of-day 4th October Anywhere on Earth. 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 virtually during the FOSS4G 2024 event in Belém, Brasil. 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:

 2023: Howard Butler
 2022: Sandro Santilli
 2021: Malena Libman
 2020: Anita Graser
 2019: Even Rouault
 2018: Astrid Emde
 2017: Andrea Aime
 2016: Jeff McKenna
 2015: Maria Brovelli
 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 2024:

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
Maria Brovelli
Andrea Aime
Astrid Emde
Even Rouault
Anita Graser
Ariel Anthieni
Sandro Santilli
Howard Butler

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.

Solomon Stuart Katz aka Sol 1947-1999

Background

Solomon '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 (GitHub archive: https://github.com/OSGeo/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 (GitHub archive: https://github.com/jmckenna/sdts2dem). 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 Sol's 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).