Open Source GIS History

2008-08-25T12:13:52Z

Wiki-Paul K: Clarification on PROJ

== Software projects ==

In '''XX''' and '''XXI''' century, a series of other desktop and server Open Source GIS projects were started:
* geospatial libraries: [http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/ PROJ.4], [http://www.osgeo.org/geotools Geotools], Geoserver, TerraLib
* Desktop GIS: [http://grass.osgeo.org GRASS GIS], SAGA GIS, uDIG, [http://www.osgeo.org/gvsig gvSIG], ILWIS
* Web mapping/WebGIS: [http://www.osgeo.org/deegree deegree], [http://www.osgeo.org/mapserver UMN MapServer], [http://www.osgeo.org/mapguide MapGuide Open Source]
* geostatistics software: gstat, R Project for Statistical Computing
* metadata catalogs: [http://www.osgeo.org/geonetwork GeoNetwork Open Source]

=== Timeline ===

'''1978''' - Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS). A pioneer vector-based geographic information system (GIS) developed by the U.S. Department of Interior. MOSS is still available to download (ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/). Mr. Carl Reed has written an article about [http://www.scribd.com/doc/4606038/2004-Article-by-Carl-Reed-MOSS-A-Historical-perspective MOSS history].

'''since 1982-today''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/grass GRASS] (Geographical Resources Analysis Support System) is the earliest Open Source GIS which reached production status and supported both raster and vector data. It was originally developed from 1982 to 1995 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, since then by the international GRASS Development Team. Initially published as public domain software, its license was changed to GNU GPL (General Public License, see www.gnu.org) in 1999.

'''1983''' - [http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/ PROJ4 library] development started. The original proj was developed in the early 1980's as a ratfor (a fortran preprocessor)
program (Evenden, 1983) with much of the code derived from the Geological
Survey’s General Cartographic Transformation Package (gctp) (superceded
by a more portable Version II by Elassal, 1987). Program proj was recoded in the
C language when the mapgen package (Evenden and Botbol, 1985), of which proj
is an integral part, was transfered to the Unix operating system. (References refer to [ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/proj/OF90-284.pdf])

'''1995''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/mapserver UMN MapServer] project started. In '''2002''' MapServer gets Python support.

'''1998''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/gdal_ogr GDAL/OGR] development started. Python support was added in '''2000'''.

'''1999''' - [http://grass.osgeo.org GRASS GIS] source code moved from manual management into CVS

'''2000''' - Atlantis Scientific launched [http://openev.sourceforge.net/ OpenEV] project

'''2000''' - [http://sourceforge.net/projects/jts-topo-suite/ JTS Topology Suite] project was initiated in Fall 2000. JTS 1.0 was released in February '''2002''' and version 1.1 in March '''2002'''.

'''2001''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/ossim OSSIM] initial revision in CVS

'''2003''' - [http://communitymapbuilder.org Community MapBuilder] started . The end of life of MapBuilder project was officially [http://communitymapbuilder.org/display/MAP/EndOfLife announced] on '''28 July 2008'''. [http://communitymapbuilder.org/display/MAP/Strategic+Direction#StrategicDirection-KeyMilestones ref]

'''2001''' - [http://www.postgis.org PostGIS] started

'''2002''' - Intevation,Gmbh starts [http://thuban.intevation.org Thuban] projects

'''2002''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/qgis Quantum GIS] initial revision in CVS

'''2002''' - [http://geos.refractions.net/ GEOS] initial revision in CVS

'''2002''' - [http://avpython.sourceforge.net/ AVPython] for ArcView 3.x published as FOSS

'''2005''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/mapguide MapGuide Open Source]

'''2006''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/mapbender MapBender] gets first bits in CVS

'''2006''' - [http://www.osgeo.org/openlayers OpenLayers] started

'''2008''' - [http://grass.osgeo.org GRASS GIS] runs natively also on MS-Windows

== Organizations ==

'''1992:''' "Open GRASS Foundation" (OGF)

'''1994:''' OGF was re-structured as the Open Geospatial Consortium ([http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/historylong OGC])

'''2006:''' Open Source Geospatial Foundation (http://www.osgeo.org) established whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies, data and educational material.

== See also ==

* Kenn Gardel's OGC history: http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/historylong
* [[History|OSGeo Foundation History]]
* Software projects:
** GRASS GIS History: http://grass.osgeo.org/devel/grasshist.html
** PostGIS History: http://www.refractions.net/products/postgis/history/
** JTS / GEOS History: http://lin-ear-th-inking.blogspot.com/2007/06/history-of-jts-and-geos.html

[[Category: History]]

2007 Google SoC Application

2007-03-12T10:58:16Z

Wiki-Paul K: Add myself to mentors list regarding GRASS SoC project

'''1. Describe your organization.'''

OSGeo is an incorporated not-for-profit organization serving as an umbrella organization for the Open Source Geospatial community in general, and 12 projects in particular.

'''2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2007? What do you hope to gain by participating?'''

We hope to get more students involved in open source geospatial development to grow the development community, and to advance particular projects.

'''3. Did your organization participate in GSoC 2005 or 2006? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and failures of your student projects.'''

OSGeo was formed in early 2006 and hasn't participated in GSoC in previous years. However, Refractions Research did participate in 2006 on behalf of the GeoTools, uDig, and PostGIS projects which will be participating through OSGeo. The previously participating mentors and administrator from 2006 are supporting the OSGeo 2007 effort.

'''4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?'''

Refractions Research participated in 2006, and sent 2 delegates to the mentor conference.

'''5. Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google Account information.'''

Frank Warmerdam, OSGeo President - account: fwarmerdam

'''6. What license does your project use?'''

Different projects operate under a variety of OSI approved licenses, mainly GPL, LGPL, and MIT/X.

'''7. What is the URL for your ideas page?'''

* [[GDAL SoC Ideas]]
* [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDEV/GeoServer+Summer+of+Code+Ideas GeoServer SoC Ideas]
* [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Google+Summer+of+Code GeoTools Soc Ideas]
* [http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_SoC_Ideas GRASS SoC Ideas]
* [http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/GoogleSoC2007 MapGuide Soc Ideas]
* [[PostGIS SoC Ideas 2007|PostGIS SoC Ideas]]
* [http://udig.refractions.net/confluence/display/HACK/Summer+of+Code+2007 User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS SoC Ideas]
* [[OpenJUMP 2007 SOC Ideas]]
* [[MapServer_2007_SOC_Ideas]]

'''8. What is the main development mailing list for your organization?'''

discuss@lists.osgeo.org - see http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

'''Project lists'''

* GeoServer - geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net ( [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel details] )
* GeoTools - geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net ( [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel details] )
* uDig - udig-devel@lists.refractions.net ( [http://lists.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/udig-devel details] )
* MapGuide - mapguide-internals@lists.osgeo.org ( [http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapguide-internals details] )
* OpenJUMP - jump-pilot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net ( [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jump-pilot-devel details] )
* MapServer - mapserver-dev@lists.umn.edu ( [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/community/mailinglists/mapserver-dev/ details] )
* GDAL - gdal-dev@lists.maptools.org ( [http://lists.maptools.org/
* PostGIS - postgis-users@postgis.refractions.net ( [http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users details] )

'''9. What is the main IRC channel for your organization?'''

irc://irc.freenode.net/#osgeo

'''Project irc channels:'''

* irc://irc.freenode.net/#geoserver
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#geotools
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#udig
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#mapguide
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#mapserver
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#gdal
* irc://irc.freenode.net/#postgis

'''10. Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.'''

''consider''

'''11. Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.'''

Landon Blake - sunburned.surveyor [] gmail.com

'''12. Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account Information.'''

* jody.garnett [] gmail.com (Jody Garnett) - available for uDig, GeoTools, GeoServer
* hobuisu [] gmail.com (Howard Butler) - available for GDAL
* jason.birch [] gmail.com (Jason Birch) - MapGuide
* pagameba [] gmail.com (Paul Spencer) - MapGuide
* trevor.wekel [] autodesk.com (Trevor Wekel) - MapGuide
* rbraygle [] gmail.com / robert.bray [] autodesk.com (Bob Bray) - MapGuide
* sunburned.surveyor [] gmail.com (Landon Blake) - OpenJUMP
* erwan.bocher [] gmail.com (Erwan Bocher) - OpenJUMP Alternate Mentor
* bruce.dechant [] autodesk.com (Bruce Dechant) - MapGuide
* mloskot [] gmail.com (Mateusz Loskot) - available for GEOS, GDAL
* dmorissette [] gmail.com (Daniel Morissette) - available for MapServer
* simon.pelicon [] gmail.com (Simon Pelicon) - MapGuide
* hkurtagic [] gmail.com (Haris Kurtagic) - MapGuide (backup for Simon)
* fwarmerdam [] gmail.com (Frank Warmerdam)- GDAL, MapServer
* simboss1 [] gmail.com (Simone Giannecchini) - GeoServer
* alessio.fabiani [] gmail.com (Alessio Fabiani) - GeoServer
* ijturton [] gmail.com (Ian Turton) - GeoServer, GeoTools
* tkeitt [] gmail.com (Tim Keitt) - PostGIS
* andrea.antonello [] gmail.com (Andrea Antonello) - available for uDig, GeoTools
* paulthedj [] gmail.com (Paul Kelly) - GRASS (r.los project)

'''13. What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.'''

Mentors are selected by project steering comittees based on their reputation as skilled developers, previously demonstrated ability to support new project developers, and stated willingness to devote time to the mentoring process.

'''14. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?'''

Plan A:

In order to minimize the likelyhood of disappearing students we will ensure that the OSGeo administrative contact and the mentor have full contact information (email, home phone, etc) so that we can keep in touch with them.

In addition, we will make our reporting requirements clear up front. Letting the students know that we will require weekly progress reports, participation on public IRC channels and mailing lists will all help ensure ongoing commitment to the work.

Plan B:

Leveraging Open Source software from the OSGeo stack, coupled with high-accuracy data sources, volunteers from the open source community will process the data, including student metadata, and the results will be used for the targeting instructions for high-powered space-based lasers. Results of this will be displayed on a large video wall, which will prove that the student really has disappeared, and should act as a deterrent to future student disappearances.

http://www.jasonbirch.com/files/space_lasers.jpg
([http://ossim.telascience.org/ossimdata/nhv/DSCF0129.JPG resized from] )

'''15. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?'''

Project steering committees will appoint replacement mentors if existing mentors become unavailable or unresponsive during the project period.

'''16. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?'''

The steps taken depend on the individual projects, as example last year GeoTools project has asked for weekly attendence at IRC meetings or status email.

Other possibilities include:
# Having potential students work with their potential mentor to prepare a brief plan for the implementation of their project.
# Setting milestones that need to be reached by the student. These milestones would be defined before the student's work begins. A student would subsequently write a brief e-mail informing the appropriate OSGeo or project-specific mailing list when they have reached a milestone, giving a brief description of the work completed to that date.
# Selecting students that have shown interest previously in the geospatial field.

'''17. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?'''

The steps taken depend on the individual projects, as example last year GeoTools project asked that students act as a "module maintainer" for their work. This role has an expected level of support associated with it.

Apart from that, we are relying on the open development process and the appreciation that students will receive for implementing these needed features to provide positive feedback for the students. The projects will be encouraging the students to take ownership of their work, and to contribute in other areas they may be interested in.

Other possibilities include:

# future contract work if available and the student merits it.

OSGeo - User contributions [en]

Open Source GIS History

2007 Google SoC Application