OSGeo - User contributions [en]

LIDAR Format Letter

2015-04-16T17:53:08Z

Wiki-Steko: +myself

=Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
April 2015.

We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" '''''proprietary format.''''' This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

We request that:
# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI join the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASzip.
# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
# The custodians of the open LAS format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.

=Signed=
Name, Affiliation(s), Optional comment on interest in Open LiDAR format

# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft], Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live], Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; researcher in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
# Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
# Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
# [http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli Maria Antonia Brovelli], Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy. Committed to Open Principles in Research.
# Ron Fortunato, President of [http://www.trilliumlearning.com/AmericaBridge/ Trillium Learning] LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
# [http://www.geodatawiz.com/armin-schmidt Armin Schmidt], Chief Developer at [http://www.GeodataWIZ.com GeodataWIZ Ltd] and Chairman of [http://www.archprospection.org ISAP], committed to better science through Open Data.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti Giuseppe Conti], CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
# Jorge Gustavo Rocha, Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through Open Data.
# Jim Miller, University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science, http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/ Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
# Prof. Jorg M. Hacker, Director/Chief Scientist of [http://www.airborneresearchaustralia.com Airborne Research Australia], Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
# Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of [http://www.ign.fr Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière], France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/adryane-gorayeb/74/517/96a Adryane Gorayeb], [http://www.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará Brazil], Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/yuryryabov Yury Ryabov], PhD, Senior researcher at [http://www.istc.ru/istc/db/inst.nsf/wsu/i0001823 Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety], [http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/CentralEasternEurope/13383.aspx Russian Academy of Sciences], Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teresa-lamelas-gracia/40/4a7/20b María Teresa Lamelas], [http://cud.unizar.es/ Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza], [http://geoforest.unizar.es/es/index.php GeoForest-IUCA]. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidherries David Herries], [http://www.interpine.co.nz/SitePages/Home.aspx Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation], Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation. This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
# [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez Ortega]], [http://www.mazemap.no Mazemap]. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
# [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer]], [http://www.geomaticblog.net Geomaticblog]. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-donert/3/160/571 Professor Karl Donert], President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
# Drew Fenton. Please Protect Open Standards for Geospatial data!
# [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
# [http://vmx.cx Volker Mische], OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
# [[User:carlos_psig|Carlos López Quintanilla]], [http://www.psig.es PSIG] [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] GIS consultant, Spain
# [[User:woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], [http://imaptools.com iMaptools], OSGeo Charter member.
# [[User:odoepner|Oliver Doepner]], [http://oliver.doepner.net doepner.net], Software Engineer (Java,Linux), Open Standards and Open Source advocate
# [[User:Lucadelu|Luca Delucchi]], [http://gis.cri.fmach.it Fondazione Edmund Mach], OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
# Antoine Cottin, CTO of [http://www.carbomap.com Carbomap Ltd.] and creator of [https://github.com/carbomap/Fleurdelas Fleurdelas], Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
# [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], [http://strk.keybit.net/services.html NetLab], Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
# [http://www.itopen.it Alessandro Pasotti], [http://www.itopen.it ItOpen], GIS Free Software Developer.
# [http://www.roccatello.com Eduard Roccatello], [http://www.3dgis.it 3DGIS], 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
# [[User:moovida|Andrea Antonello]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# [http://www.associazionegfoss.it Stefano Campus], President of [http://www.associazionegfoss.it GFOSS.it] Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Madi Margherita Di Leo], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Sacosta Sergio Acosta y Lara], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin], CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy

=Background=
==About LiDAR==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, that uses laser light instead of electromagnetic waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.

For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.

==LAS Limitations==

Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:

: LAS format is not without its drawbacks:

:* While it is a binary format and does not waste any space unnecessarily, neither does it apply any compression to the data it stores. That’s not good for archival use.
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20''':'''1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.

=="Optimized LAS" A ''' ''Proprietary'' ESRI Format'''==
ESRI has announced the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].

The "Optimized LAS" format is neither published, nor available under any open license, which provides both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. This creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.

One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a free Windows DLL that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between "free" and "open". Unless the Windows DLL is released under an "open" license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.

==OGC's Efforts For An ''' ''Open'' LiDAR Standard'''==

The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.

Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:

: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf at least 2007]. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."

[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details. OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.

==History: LAS and ESRI's "Optimized LAS"==

Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":

: '''Summary:'''

:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
:* ESRI discussed embracing the open [http://laszip.org LAZ] format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
:* ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.

: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''

: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then ASPRS's [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.

: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''

: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.

: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."

: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file'''

: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.

: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''

: There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."

: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."

: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''

: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean [http://laszip.org LASzip] API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."

: Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."

: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing '''

: With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. The new proprietary *.lasx files with seemingly identical functionality to the open *.lax files that had been [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/j0qA8NBMHJs/discussion announced] in May 2011 and were [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ presented] at ELMF in November 2012.

: '''July 2013: Open LASzip API released'''

: After more requests for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]), Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion released] a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.

: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''

: In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. A few days later ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] to confirming this was the case.

: From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
:# Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
:# Extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.

: '''1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement'''

: In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.

: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''

: [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] became a Gold Sponsor of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for the development of the [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that was [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/nUFMkKSz53g/discussion beta-released] in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.

: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''

: In November 2014 [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated ESRI announced] that they had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.

: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/committees/standards/LAS_1_4_r13.pdf custodians of the LAS format], the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ yet to make an official statement] regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.

=Value of Standards=

The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT, Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf</ref>

The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.

: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>

=Further Reading=

# Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS, http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/
# Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib, http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/
# Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg, http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/
# First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg, http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/
# ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS", http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression/
# ESRI description of "Optimised LAS", http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214
# Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list , http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html

=References=

<references />

SAC

2013-11-21T11:48:48Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Communication */ updated IRC channels

= Mission =
The OSGeo System Administration Committee (SAC) manages computer systems operated by OSGeo. Responsibilities include:

* Develop published policies and procedures for managing systems, and system services.
* Solicit input from stakeholders on required system services, and to prioritize which to offer and when.
* Assign appropriate security and other responsibilities to administrators and users for access to systems.
* Ensure core OSGeo system services are well maintained, highly available and recoverable in case of system failure.
* Recommend system expenditures to the Board.

= Members =

([[SAC:Primary Administrators]])

* Norman Vine
* Howard Butler
* John Graham
* Frank Warmerdam
* Daniel Morissette
* Shawn Barnes
* Gary Sherman
* Swapnil Hajare
* [[User:Mspott|Martin Spott]]
* Wolf Bergenheim
* [[User:ajolma|Ari Jolma]]
* Alan Boudreault
* Markus Neteler
* [[User:wildintellect|Alex Mandel]] (Chair)

= Meetings =
* [[SAC:June2010_meeting|June 2010 SAC OSL Transition Meeting]]
* 1/22/07 [[SAC:1_22_07_agenda]] [[SAC:1_25_07_minutes]]
* 2/22/07 [[SAC:2_22_07_agenda]] [[SAC:2_22_07_minutes]]

= Communication =
* Mailing list: [http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac Subscribe], [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/sac Archives]
* IRC in #osgeo and #telascience on irc.freenode.net (quick access: http://webchat.freenode.net/)

= Task Tracking =

Infrastructure problems should be filed as trac ticket to SAC:
* [http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/login login] and [http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/newticket?component=Systems%20Admin Submit Trac Ticket]

Open issues:
* [http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&component=Systems%20Admin&order=priority Open SAC Issues]
* Old [[SAC TODO List]] (need to migrate any remaining issues to Trac).

= Procedures =
* [[SAC:Primary Administrators]]
* [[SAC:Admin and Troubleshooting]]
* [[SAC:Backups]]
* [[SAC:Standard System Setup]]
* [[SAC:ISO Mirroring]]
* [[SAC:Setup CiviCRM]]

= Documents =

* [[Infrastructure Transition Plan 2010]]
* [[SAC DNS Registry]] lists DNS entries within the osgeo.org domain.
* [[2007 Annual Report]]
* [[OSL]] - Information on our use of system services at the OSU Open Source Labs (OSL).

= Services =

* [[SAC Service Status]] indicates what services are setup, where and known issues (PEER1 and Telascience).
* [[BuildBot Configuration]]
* [[Download Server]]
* [[Trac Instances]]
* [[Community Mapbuilder Continuum Builds]]
* [[Drupal Portal]] - transition notes for www project, talks about issues transitioning to new web site portal.
* [[Subversion]] - Subversion services and configuration
* [[SAC:Mailing Lists]]
* [[SAC:LDAP]]
* [[Moodle]] - educational server for training and courses
* [[Postgrey]] - spam filter for postfix
* [http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/wiki/MediaWikiConfiguration Mediawiki Configuration] (http://wiki.osgeo.org)

= Projects with SAC involved =
* [[Geodata processing at telascience.org]] - by [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]]
* The [[Software Stack]] page talks about the ''Reference Stack'' of software we would like to setup for demonstration and testing purposes.
* [[Kids GIS Portal]] - hosted at telascience, a wee bit of systems help.

= Migration to new Infrastructure =

* [[Infrastructure Transition Plan 2010]]

== Old migration documents for historical review. ==

* [[Migration Documentation]] - assorted services on www.osgeo.org
* [[Drupal Upgrade Plan]] - Wolf's fall 2007 plan to upgrade Drupal to 5.3.
* The [[Project Infrastructure Migration]] page talks about migration issues of the projects in incubation and provides hints to some services we should be trying to provide.
* [[Migration Tasks and Milestones]]
* [[Migration Documentation]]
* [[Infrastructure Transition Plan | Infrastructure Transition Plan 2006]]

[[Category:Infrastructure]]
[[Category:Committees]]

Contacts

2013-11-13T09:35:09Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Local Chapters */ alphabetic ordering seems more useful than random :-)

OSGeo Projects are freestanding entities, handled by their own Project Steering Committees. Each project has been asked to provide a representative to help coordinate OSGeo involvement. These volunteers are listed by project below:

== General ==
* General Foundation Info - info@osgeo.org - [mailto:info@osgeo.org] (emails are currently forwarded to 3 people: FrankW, JeffM, MarkL)
* President - [[Jeff McKenna]] - jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
* [[Board of Directors]] - [[User:warmerda|Frank Warmerdam]] - warmerdam@pobox.com
* [[Treasurer]] (AC/AP) - Daniel Morissette - treasurer at osgeo.org

== Software Projects ==
'''Web Mapping'''
* [http://www.degree.org/ deegree]: [http://wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/StructuresAndProcedures PSC] - Contact: [[User:JensFitzke | Jens Fitzke]]
* [http://geomajas.org Geomajas]: [http://www.geomajas.org/community/project-steering-committee PSC] - Chair: Pieter De Graef (pieter.degraef at geosparc.com)
* [http://www.geomoose.org/ GeoMoose]: [http://www.geomoose.org/rfc/rfc-1.html PSC] - Chair: - Brian Fischer (bfischer at houstoneng.com)
* [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]: [http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/developer/policies/psc.html PSC] - Chair: Jody Garnett (jody.garnett at gmail.com)
* [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender]: [http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Category:PSC PSC] - Chair: Christian Wygoda
* [http://www.mapfish.org MapFish]: [http://trac.mapfish.org/trac/mapfish/wiki/Community/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[User:Elem | Eric Lemoine]]
* [http://mapguide.osgeo.org/ MapGuide Open Source]: [http://mapguide.osgeo.org/psc.html PSC] - Chair: Robert Bray (robert.bray at autodesk.com)
* [http://mapserver.org/ MapServer]: [http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-23.html PSC] - Chair: Stephen Lime (sdlime at comcast.net)
* [http://openlayers.org/ OpenLayers]: [http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/SteeringCommittee PSC] - Chair: [[User:Tschaub | Tim Schaub]]

'''Desktop Applications'''
* [http://grass.osgeo.org/ GRASS GIS]: [http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[Markus Neteler]]
* [http://www.gvsig.org/ gvSIG]: - [[GvSIG Technical Project Committee|PSC]] - Chair: [[Manuel Madrid]]
* [http://marble.kde.org/ Marble]: [http://edu.kde.org/marble/authors.php Authors] - Liaison Officer: [[Torsten Rahn]]
* [http://www.ossim.org/ OSSIM]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/ossim/wiki/ossimgovernance PSC] - Chair: Garrett Potts
* [http://www.qgis.org/ Quantum GIS]: [http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/Project_Organigram PSC] (outdated, see [http://spatialgalaxy.net/2013/08/25/welcome-to-new-qgis-psc-members/ this blog post] by Gary Sherman for the current PSC members - Chair: Gary Sherman (sherman at mrcc.com)

'''Geospatial Libraries'''
* [http://fdo.osgeo.org/ FDO]: [http://fdo.osgeo.org/ Home Page] (link to PSC broken) - Chair: Greg Boone (greg.boone at autodesk.com)
* [http://www.gdal.org/ GDAL/OGR]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/GovernanceAndCommunity PSC] - Chair: Frank Warmerdam (warmerdam@pobox.com)
* [http://www.geotools.org/ GeoTools]: [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOT/4+Project+Management+Committee PSC] - Chair: Jody Garnett (jody.garnett at gmail.com)
* [http://geos.osgeo.org/ GEOS]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[User:Strk | Sandro Santilli]] (strk at keybit.net)
* [http://metacrs.osgeo.org/ MetaCRS]: [http://metacrs.osgeo.org PSC] - Chair: Frank Warmerdam (warmerdam@pobox.com)
* [http://postgis.org/ PostGIS]: [http://postgis.org/documentation/manual-svn/ch01.html#psc PSC] - Chair: [[User:Pwramsey3 | Paul Ramsey]]

'''Metadata Catalog'''
* [http://geonetwork-opensource.org GeoNetwork opensource]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: Jeroen Ticheler (Jeroen.Ticheler at geocat.net)

== Committees ==
* [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] - Charlie Schweik - cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu
* [[Finance Committee]] - Daniel Morissette - dmorissette at mapgears.com
* [[Incubation Committee]] - Jody Garnett - jody.garnett at gmail.com
* [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]] - David William Bitner - bitner at dbspatial.com
* [[Marketing Committee]] - Cameron Shorter - cameron.shorter at gmail.com
* [[SAC|System Administration Committee]] - Alex Mandel - tech_dev at wildintellect.com
* [[Website Committee]] - Christopher Schmidt - crschmidt at metacarta.com
* [[Conference Committee]] - Jeff McKenna - jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
* OSGeo [[Journal]]

== Packaging ==
* [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live] - Cameron Shorter - cameron.shorter at gmail.com

== Local Chapters ==

Contacts list for the [[:Category:Local_Chapters|local chapters]]:
* [[Africa Local Chapter]] - [[User:Gfleming|Gavin Fleming]]
* [[Aust-NZ]] - Australia and New Zealand Chapter- Bruce Bannerman - bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com
* [[Brazil]] - Helton Uchoa - engenheiro.uchoa at gmail.com
* [[California]] - Landon Blake - sunburned.surveyor at gmail dot com
* [[Cascadia|CUGOS Cascadia Chapter US]] - [[User:Racicot|Aaron Racicot]] - aaronr at cugos.org
* [[China]] - Chen Rongguo - chenrg at lreis.ac.cn
* [[D-A-CH]] (German language) - [[User:Mlechner|Marco Lechner]]
* [[Finland]] - Ari Jolma - ajolma at osgeo.org
* [[Francophone]] - board at osgeo.asso dot fr (or [[User:Yjacolin|yjacolin]])
* [[Greek]] - [[User:kotzino|Dimitris Kotzinos]] - kotzino at csd dot uoc dot gr
* [[India]] - P.S. Roy - psroy13 at gmail.com
* [[Italy]] - [[User:epifanio|Massimo Di Stefano]] - IT -- epiesasha at me dot com
* [[Japan]] - Mr. Mori Toru - moritoru at orkney.co.jp
* [[Korea | Korean Language Chapter]] - [[User:Endofcap|Sanghee Shin]] - shshin at gaia3d.com or endofcap at gmail.com
* [[KSA Chapter]] - Awase Khirni Syed - awasekhirni at gmail.com
* [[Nederlands | Dutch language Chapter]] - [[User:Just|Just van den Broecke]] - Kwartiermaker en primair contact
* [[Ottawa Chapter]] - Scott Mitchell - smitch at mac.com
* [[PDX-OSGEO]] - Oregon, US Chapter -- [[User:EliL|Eli L Adam]] - eadam at
* [[Philippines]] - [[User:maning|Maning Sambale]] - emmanuel dot sambale at gmail dot com
* [[Poland]] - Tomasz Kubik - tomasz kubik at pwr wroc pl
* [[Portugal]] - Jorge Gustavo Rocha - [[Jorge_Gustavo_Rocha]], Giovanni Manghi - [[Giovanni_Manghi]]
* [[Quebec]] - [[User:Dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]] - dmorissette at mapgears dot com
* [[Spanish]] - [[Pedro-Juan Ferrer]] - vehrka at gmail.com
* [[Taiwan]] - Sander Borghuis - s.borghuis at geo.uu.nl
* [[Twin_Cities]] - Twin Cities, MN -- David Bitner - bitner at dbspatial dot com
* [http://www.osgeo.org/uk UK] - [[User:JoCook|Jo Cook]]

== Infrastructure ==

* [[SAC:Primary Administrators]]

[[Category:Board]]
[[Category:Education]]
[[Category:Incubation]]
[[Category:Infrastructure]]
[[Category:PSC]]

Contacts

2013-11-13T09:26:26Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Software Projects */ some broken links and missing information about PSCs

OSGeo Projects are freestanding entities, handled by their own Project Steering Committees. Each project has been asked to provide a representative to help coordinate OSGeo involvement. These volunteers are listed by project below:

== General ==
* General Foundation Info - info@osgeo.org - [mailto:info@osgeo.org] (emails are currently forwarded to 3 people: FrankW, JeffM, MarkL)
* President - [[Jeff McKenna]] - jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
* [[Board of Directors]] - [[User:warmerda|Frank Warmerdam]] - warmerdam@pobox.com
* [[Treasurer]] (AC/AP) - Daniel Morissette - treasurer at osgeo.org

== Software Projects ==
'''Web Mapping'''
* [http://www.degree.org/ deegree]: [http://wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/StructuresAndProcedures PSC] - Contact: [[User:JensFitzke | Jens Fitzke]]
* [http://geomajas.org Geomajas]: [http://www.geomajas.org/community/project-steering-committee PSC] - Chair: Pieter De Graef (pieter.degraef at geosparc.com)
* [http://www.geomoose.org/ GeoMoose]: [http://www.geomoose.org/rfc/rfc-1.html PSC] - Chair: - Brian Fischer (bfischer at houstoneng.com)
* [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]: [http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/developer/policies/psc.html PSC] - Chair: Jody Garnett (jody.garnett at gmail.com)
* [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender]: [http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Category:PSC PSC] - Chair: Christian Wygoda
* [http://www.mapfish.org MapFish]: [http://trac.mapfish.org/trac/mapfish/wiki/Community/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[User:Elem | Eric Lemoine]]
* [http://mapguide.osgeo.org/ MapGuide Open Source]: [http://mapguide.osgeo.org/psc.html PSC] - Chair: Robert Bray (robert.bray at autodesk.com)
* [http://mapserver.org/ MapServer]: [http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-23.html PSC] - Chair: Stephen Lime (sdlime at comcast.net)
* [http://openlayers.org/ OpenLayers]: [http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/SteeringCommittee PSC] - Chair: [[User:Tschaub | Tim Schaub]]

'''Desktop Applications'''
* [http://grass.osgeo.org/ GRASS GIS]: [http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[Markus Neteler]]
* [http://www.gvsig.org/ gvSIG]: - [[GvSIG Technical Project Committee|PSC]] - Chair: [[Manuel Madrid]]
* [http://marble.kde.org/ Marble]: [http://edu.kde.org/marble/authors.php Authors] - Liaison Officer: [[Torsten Rahn]]
* [http://www.ossim.org/ OSSIM]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/ossim/wiki/ossimgovernance PSC] - Chair: Garrett Potts
* [http://www.qgis.org/ Quantum GIS]: [http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/Project_Organigram PSC] (outdated, see [http://spatialgalaxy.net/2013/08/25/welcome-to-new-qgis-psc-members/ this blog post] by Gary Sherman for the current PSC members - Chair: Gary Sherman (sherman at mrcc.com)

'''Geospatial Libraries'''
* [http://fdo.osgeo.org/ FDO]: [http://fdo.osgeo.org/ Home Page] (link to PSC broken) - Chair: Greg Boone (greg.boone at autodesk.com)
* [http://www.gdal.org/ GDAL/OGR]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/GovernanceAndCommunity PSC] - Chair: Frank Warmerdam (warmerdam@pobox.com)
* [http://www.geotools.org/ GeoTools]: [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOT/4+Project+Management+Committee PSC] - Chair: Jody Garnett (jody.garnett at gmail.com)
* [http://geos.osgeo.org/ GEOS]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: [[User:Strk | Sandro Santilli]] (strk at keybit.net)
* [http://metacrs.osgeo.org/ MetaCRS]: [http://metacrs.osgeo.org PSC] - Chair: Frank Warmerdam (warmerdam@pobox.com)
* [http://postgis.org/ PostGIS]: [http://postgis.org/documentation/manual-svn/ch01.html#psc PSC] - Chair: [[User:Pwramsey3 | Paul Ramsey]]

'''Metadata Catalog'''
* [http://geonetwork-opensource.org GeoNetwork opensource]: [http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/PSC PSC] - Chair: Jeroen Ticheler (Jeroen.Ticheler at geocat.net)

== Committees ==
* [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] - Charlie Schweik - cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu
* [[Finance Committee]] - Daniel Morissette - dmorissette at mapgears.com
* [[Incubation Committee]] - Jody Garnett - jody.garnett at gmail.com
* [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]] - David William Bitner - bitner at dbspatial.com
* [[Marketing Committee]] - Cameron Shorter - cameron.shorter at gmail.com
* [[SAC|System Administration Committee]] - Alex Mandel - tech_dev at wildintellect.com
* [[Website Committee]] - Christopher Schmidt - crschmidt at metacarta.com
* [[Conference Committee]] - Jeff McKenna - jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
* OSGeo [[Journal]]

== Packaging ==
* [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live] - Cameron Shorter - cameron.shorter at gmail.com

== Local Chapters ==

Contacts list for the [[:Category:Local_Chapters|local chapters]]:
* [[Ottawa Chapter]] - Scott Mitchell - smitch at mac.com
* [[China]] - Chen Rongguo - chenrg at lreis.ac.cn
* [[Japan]] - Mr. Mori Toru - moritoru at orkney.co.jp
* [[Korea | Korean Language Chapter]] - [[User:Endofcap|Sanghee Shin]] - shshin at gaia3d.com or endofcap at gmail.com
* [[KSA Chapter]] - Awase Khirni Syed - awasekhirni at gmail.com
* [[India]] - P.S. Roy - psroy13 at gmail.com
* [[Brazil]] - Helton Uchoa - engenheiro.uchoa at gmail.com
* [[Taiwan]] - Sander Borghuis - s.borghuis at geo.uu.nl
* [[Spanish]] - [[Pedro-Juan Ferrer]] - vehrka at gmail.com
* [[Aust-NZ]] - Australia and New Zealand Chapter- Bruce Bannerman - bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com
* [[Finland]] - Ari Jolma - ajolma at osgeo.org
* [[Francophone]] - board at osgeo.asso dot fr (or [[User:Yjacolin|yjacolin]])
* [[D-A-CH]] (German language) - [[User:Mlechner|Marco Lechner]]
* [[Nederlands | Dutch language Chapter]] - [[User:Just|Just van den Broecke]] - Kwartiermaker en primair contact
* [[California]] - Landon Blake - sunburned.surveyor at gmail dot com
* [[Quebec]] - [[User:Dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]] - dmorissette at mapgears dot com
* [[Portugal]] - Jorge Gustavo Rocha - [[Jorge_Gustavo_Rocha]], Giovanni Manghi - [[Giovanni_Manghi]]
* [[Greek]] - [[User:kotzino|Dimitris Kotzinos]] - kotzino at csd dot uoc dot gr
* [[Italy]] - [[User:epifanio|Massimo Di Stefano]] - IT -- epiesasha at me dot com
* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/California California Chapter] - Landon Blake sunburned dot surveyor at gmail dot com
* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Cascadia CUGOS - Cascadia Chapter US] - [[User:Racicot|Aaron Racicot]] - aaronr at cugos.org
* [[PDX-OSGEO]] - Oregon, US Chapter -- [[User:EliL|Eli L Adam]] - eadam at
* [[Twin_Cities]] - Twin Cities, MN -- David Bitner - bitner at dbspatial dot com
* [[Philippines]] - [[User:maning|Maning Sambale]] - emmanuel dot sambale at gmail dot com
* [[Africa Local Chapter]] - [[User:Gfleming|Gavin Fleming]]
* [[Poland]] - Tomasz Kubik - tomasz kubik at pwr wroc pl
* [http://www.osgeo.org/uk UK] - [[User:JoCook|Jo Cook]]

== Infrastructure ==

* [[SAC:Primary Administrators]]

[[Category:Board]]
[[Category:Education]]
[[Category:Incubation]]
[[Category:Infrastructure]]
[[Category:PSC]]

Geoservices REST API

2013-05-09T13:49:39Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Signed */

This wiki page aims to collate community concerns related to the proposed acceptance of the "Geoservices REST API" becoming an OGC standard. It is being collaboratively edited, targeting completion before the end of May 2013.

= Open Letter to OGC and voting members =

''Please don't edit this "Open Letter" statement, comments and discussion should go below.''

May 2013

We, the undersigned, have concerns that approving the "Geoservices REST API" as an OGC standard, would have detrimental impacts on interoperability within the spatial industry.

We strongly urge that the proposed "Geoservices REST API", as it stands in May 2013, be rejected as an OGC standard.

People have listed different reasons for concern. They are described below.

== Signed ==
''Please add your name here if you agree with the above statement. Include name, work title (if appropriate), very brief title/involvement in OSGeo if appropriate. (Link to OSGeo profile if appropriate). You may sign as a group, such as the Project Steering Committee of XXX project if you wish, or as Your Name on behalf of YYY company.''

* [[User:camerons|Cameron Shorter]], Geospatial Solutions Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft], core contributor & coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live]
* [[Mark Lucas]], Founding member and board of directors for OSGeo foundation, Prinicipal Scientist for RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.
* [[User:Woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], Director of [http://imaptools.com iMaptools.com], Contributor and/or PSC of [http://mapserver.org Mapserver], [http://pgrouting.org/ pgRouting], [http://www.pagcgeo.org/ PAGC], and [http://www.postgis.org/ PostGIS]
* [[User:rouault|Even Rouault]], Geospatial developer, OSGeo Charter Member, core contributor and PSC member of [http://gdal.org GDAL/OGR], contributor of [http://mapserver.org Mapserver], [http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/ PROJ.4], [http://trac.osgeo.org/geotiff/ libgeotiff], [http://shapelib.maptools.org/ shapelib], [http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/ libtiff]
* Gerhard Triebnig, Managing Director at [http://eox.at EOX IT Services GmbH]
* [[User:pcreso|Brent Wood]], Environmental Information Delivery Programme Leader, NIWA, New Zealand. OGC member, Aust/NZ OSGEO chapter member, NZOSS Council member
* [[User:Schpidi|Stephan Meissl]], CTO at [http://eox.at EOX IT Services GmbH], contributor to [http://mapserver.org Mapserver], PSC chair of [http://eoxserver.org EOxServer]
* [[User:ticheler|Jeroen Ticheler]], Director of [http://geocat.net GeoCat], project founder and PSC chair of [http://geonetwork-opensource.org GeoNetwork opensource]
* [[User:Just|Just van den Broecke]], Director at [http://www.justobjects.nl Just Objects], contributor to [http://heron-mc.org Heron Mapping Client], secretary of [http://osgeo.nl OSGeo Dutch Local Chapter], member at [http://www.opengeogroep.nl OpenGeoGroep]
* [[User:milovanderlinden|Milo van der Linden]], member at [http://www.opengeogroep.nl OpenGeoGroep]
* [[User:surveyor|Landon Blake]], GIS Department Manager/Land Surveyor at [http://www.ksninc.com KSN], OSGeo California Chapter Board Representative.
* [[User:dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]], President at [http://mapgears.com/ Mapgears], core contributor and PSC member of [http://mapserver.org Mapserver] and [http://gdal.org GDAL/OGR]. Former OGC TC member and involved in the implementation of several OGC WxS services specs in MapServer.
* [[User:blammo|Bob Basques]], GIS Systems Developer at the City of Saint Paul, MN. [http://gis.ci.stpaul.mn.us Public Works GIS (GISmo)], Technical Director at [http://www.sharedgeo.org SharedGeo], OSGeo Charter Member, OSGeo TCMUG local chapter member, Co-founder and PSC member of [http://www.geomoose.org GeoMoose] project.
* [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer Matoses]], PM at Omnium Strategic Intelligence, Spain, OSGeo Charter Member, OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Liaison officer.
* Bevan Rudge, Director Lucion Limited, IT Advisor at Conservation Strategy Fund, Esri client
* [[User:Delawen|María Arias de Reyna]], software engineer at [http://geocat.net GeoCat], Spain, member of OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter.
* [[User:Aghisla|Anne Ghisla]], OSGeo Board Member, Italy, member of OSGeo Italian Local Chapter.
* [[User:Michogar|Micho Garcia]], Freelance and member of [http://geomati.co geomati.co], Spain, member of Spanish Local Chapter
* [[User:Madi|Margherita Di Leo]], OSGeo Charter Member, Italy
* [[Jorge Sanz]], GIS Consultant at [http://www.prodevelop.es Prodevelop], OSGeo Charter Member, OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
* [[Pablo Sanxiao]], CTO and co-founder at [http://www.icarto.es iCarto], OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
* [[User:Fsteggink|Frank Steggink]], GIS software developer at [http://www.vicrea.nl Vicrea], The Netherlands, member of the Dutch Local Chapter
* [[User:Olivier.courtin|Olivier Courtin]], [http://www.oslandia.com Oslandia] co-founder, core contributor or/and PSC member of [http://mapserver.org Mapserver] and [http://www.postgis.org/ PostGIS]. OGC TC member.
* [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
* [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member.
* [[User:Vmische|Volker Mische]], geospatial software engineer, creator of GeoCouch
* [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez]], OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, head of [http://www.openstreetmap.es OpenStreetMap Spain], [http://osmfoundation.org OpenStreetMap Foundation] member, [http://hot.openstreetmap.org/ Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team] member, [http://www.idee.es/ Spanish SDI working group] member
* [[User:Gabi|Gabriel Carrión]], Strategy Manager at [http://www.gvsig.com gvSIG association]
* [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], OSGeo Charter Member, [http://postgis.net PostGIS] and [http://trac.osgeo.org/geos GEOS] PSC member and core hacker.
* [[User:Javiarch|Javier Diaz]], member of Geoinquietos Bs As [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:Geoinquietos_Buenos_Aires], member of the Organizing Committee FOSS4G Bs As 2013 [http://www.foss4g-ba.org/]
* [[User: JoCook|Jo Cook]], Consultant at [http://isharemaps.com| Astun Technology], former Director of OSGeo, Charter Member, founder of UK Local Chapter, Deputy Chair of [http://2013.foss4g.org| FOSS4G 2013]
* [[User: Fpenarru | Francisco José Peñarrubia]], CTO and co-founder at [http://www.scolab.es SCOLAB]. Members of [http://www.gvsig.com gvSIG Association]
* [[User: Ganesh|Shanmugam Ganeshkumar]], Director of [http://www.geoicon.com GeoICON], member OSGeo Malaysia Chapter
* [[User:Barryrowlingson|Barry Rowlingson]], Senior Researcher, Lancaster University and Software Sustainability Institute Fellow
* [[User: Sfkeller|Stefan Keller]], University of Applied Sciences, Rapperswil (Switzerland), Member of Swiss OSM (SOSM) and QGIS association and of organizing committees of pgConf.DE and FOSSGIS 2013, and member of eCH (e-government standards of Switzerland)
* [[User: AndyBMapMan|Andrew Bailey]], OSGeo member, Astun Technology
* [[User: Sanand|Suchith Anand]], OSGeo Charter member, OSGeo Education member, FOSS4G 2013 LOC member
* [[User: krefftc|Carlos Krefft]], GIS software developer at [http://www.cstars.miami.edu CSTARS - University of Miami], OGC Member.
* [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], OSGeo member, GFOSS.it member and former board member, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Italy)

= Concerns =
--- DRAFT ____

''Please add concerns as bullet points below. Try to be concise. Where appropriate, link to external web pages (such as email achieves)''

== Summary ==
As at May 2013, OGC members have been asked to decide whether to accept the "GeoServices REST API" as an OGC standard. This is a contentious issue, with many people arguing that introduction of the “GeoServices REST API” will have costly, far reaching, negative impacts on interoperability, and significantly tarnish the OGC's reputation as a champion of interoperability.

The key points of contention revolve around the fact that the proposed "GeoServices REST API" does not build upon or extend existing OGC standards, but rather addresses similar requirements using an alternative API. In particular, the overlap and/or duplication of existing standards is widespread: OGC's core standards of WMS, WMTS, WFS, SE/SLD, WCS, CS/W are all duplicated to a significant extent. This defeats the purpose of having standards in the first place.

Duplication of standards will likely result in a combination of the following:
# The cost to application developers, systems integrators, testers and sponsors to support all relevant OGC standards will be substantially increased.
# Consequently, organisations and/or applications may choose to only support one standard, or only support one standard fully.
# Sponsors (such as governments) who require compliance with OGC standards will discover that applications don't communicate together, due to applications supporting different OGC standards that essentially do the same thing.
# This will result in a diminished importance of OGC, as the "OGC standards" stamp of approval will not equate interoperability.
# After a while, in order to solve interoperability issues, a respected international organisation or program will likely take the initiative to mandate one standard as the preferred standard for all agencies to follow. To date, the OGC has provided this leadership.
# One standard taking prominance over the other will likely lead to the other being neglected or deprecated, resulting in many OGC compliant systems becoming legacy systems in the process. This should be considered an undesirable outcome for a standards organisation. Backward compatibility to the existing WxS standards is important in this respect.
# Given backwards compatibility with the ESRI Restful implementation is mandated, this is not an Open Standard, and should not be ratified as if it was.

== Political Concerns ==

* Adopting the standard will expose the OGC to a strong suspicion of acting as a rubber stamp organization under ESRI weight, and will be detrimental to its recognized position as a reference organization for geospatial standards.
* It is a dubious practice that a standardization organisation promotes competing standards, without explicitely obsoleting (or at least recommending) some of them. How is a newcomer to the industry supposed to select the appropriate standard if several ones share the same scope : WFS or GeoServices REST API Feature Service, WMS or GeoServices REST API Map Service, etc. ?

== Commercial Concerns ==

* Promoting standards from an existing implementation made by a single vendor leads to an obvious bias in competition.
* Supporting multiple overlapping standards greatly reduces usability while it increases complexity and cost of development and maintenance.
* Many SME's have invested in supporting existing OGC standards in their products. They will be forced to choose the standards they support (and can explain), resulting in decreased interoperability, confusion and frustration for clients.
* Confusing customers with new, overlapping OGC standards will lower the credibility of companies and of OGC, reducing business opportunities.

== Technical Concerns ==

* The Geoservices REST API overlaps in large proportion with existing OGC standards such as WMS, WCS, WFS, WMTS, CSW, with no effort made to reconcile with those standards.
* The standardization of WKT for Spatial reference systems is unfortunately currently quite weak in OGC standards. Geoservices REST API is tied with ESRI's version of WKT, which is not properly specified in the Geoservices REST API documents, and is known to be incompatible with other OGC documents, which will lead to a larger confusion. See the following [http://lists.opengeospatial.org/pipermail/requests/2012-July/000166.html comment] for more details on this issue.
* The Geoservices REST API is not particularly RESTful - it's a thinly disguised service call, not an address space for RESTful objects that can be operated on.
* At least as far as "imagery" is concerned, OGC standards arguably are substantially more mature, powerful, flexible, and modular then the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" Part 6 (and some design principles suggest that scalability may be hampered as well):
** data model:
*** the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" appears constrained to 2-D imagery, plus optional time stamps. OGC has established a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverage_data unified coverage model] which fully supports n-D spatio-temporal data. It allows use and exchange of coverages between different services, such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Coverage_Service WCS], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Coverage_Processing_Service WCPS], WPS, and SWE.
*** OGC coverages support both regular and irregular grids; the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" supports only regular grids, more specifically: only rectified grids with quadrilateral pixels.
*** the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" lacks support for temporal data; it only offers timestamps, measured in milliseconds; this is inconvenient for users and immediately excludes, e.g., geological dates. OGC has established uniform handling of horizontal, vertical, and temporal coordinate reference systems (CRSs), following a deep consensus process with GIS science and backwards compatible with EPSG. The ESRI "Geoservice REST API" specific way of handling coordinates is not known to support this, thereby excluding appropriate timeseries handling in remote sensing, air traffic, MetOcean, etc.
*** OGC coverages provide a concise, versatile model for supporting different binary formats; the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" supports only very few selected 2-D formats, excluding, e.g., JPEG2000, NetCDF, HDF, etc.
*** the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" lacks a clear model of their data structures, it can be deduced only implicitly from the operation mechanics.
** service model:
*** The ESRI "Geoservice REST API" Part 6 lacks conciseness, thereby opening up ways for implementations that are not interoperable. For developers of alternative implementations this may mean they have to acquire ESRI licenses for finding out the intended behavior.
*** Functionality in the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" appears randomly chosen, with no clear concept visible; this burdens implementers while still leaving holes of functionality. For example, this functionality appears restricted to mapping applications and does not easily extend into other domains.
*** It has been said that the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" can be seen as a "wrapper around OGC W*S" services. This is not true for WCS (and WCPS), at least: the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" Part 6 is too poor in functionality and too different in mechanics to accomplish this.
** In summary, the ESRI "Geoservice REST API" Imaging part is at a technological level where WCS departed from some 5 years ago. Inconciseness of the specification at large will make it difficult for third parties to come up with interoperable implementations. Therefore, Part 6 of the ESRI "Geoservice REST API", if to become a standard, needs to be discussed in the WCS.SWG for harmonization, clarification, and improvement.

== Methodological Concerns ==

* No public response (nor private to the authors of the comments) has been made to the various comments sent on the OGC Requests mailing list in [[http://lists.opengeospatial.org/pipermail/requests/2012-July/date.html July 2012]] and [[http://lists.opengeospatial.org/pipermail/requests/2012-August/date.html August 2012]] during the 30 day public comments period.
* The Geoservices REST API can not be amended (other than editorial changes in the specification document), because of a requirement of backward compatibility with ESRI implementation. Consequently, the standard is unlikely to improve, or its evolution will be only lead by ESRI.
* OGC standards normally require interoperability experiments and a richer process to ratify a standard such as this one. No explanation has been forthcoming as to why a simplified process is appropriate in this case.
* ESRI/OGC have specifically [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-May/011659.html rejected requests] to openly share their justifications document being selectively sent to OGC voters.

= History =

Todo: please expand
* Explain how this standard came to be
* Based on ArcGIS Server API
* Attempted but failed to go through OGC fast track process
* Recent voting history: refer to: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-May/011602.html

= References =
Todo: Link to key external docs, such as the proposed standards

[[Category: OGC]]
[[Category: Standards]]

EU PSI Directive Survey

2010-10-24T17:07:52Z

Wiki-Steko: Created page with 'A collaborative page to draft a collective response to the [http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010 on-line survey on the EU PSI Directive]. ==…'

A collaborative page to draft a collective response to the [http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010 on-line survey on the EU PSI Directive].

== Preliminary questions ==

I reply as /on behalf of a: (compulsory)
* PSI content holder (mapping agency, meteorological agency, etc.)
* PSI re-user
* public authority (other than PSI content holder)
* academic/expert
* citizen
* other

Please provide your name, and where relevant the name of your organisation (compulsory)

Please provide your e-mail address (compulsory)

Please provide your country of residence / establishment (compulsory)

== Context and possible action to consider ==

Do you think that PSI re-use has reached its full potential in Europe? (optional)

* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

Could further action towards opening up public data resources and practical measures facilitating re-use (asset lists of available documents, simplified or no licensing conditions, marginal costs etc.) contribute to unlocking innovation and developing new services, applications and mash-ups? (optional)

* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

Community-wide products and services using PSI are not limited to national borders. Do you think that divergent national rules can make it more complicated to grasp economic opportunities and to develop cross-border products and services? (optional)

* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

Should further action be taken at Community level to promote cross-border products and services re-using PSI? (optional)

* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

In your opinion, should the PSI Directive be amended? (optional)

* yes
* no

=== Amendments to the Directive ===

If yes, should there be

* more substantive amendments to the Directive? (optional)
* and/or technical adjustments to the Directive clarifying some of the provisions? (optional)

If you think that the PSI Directive should be amended, which issues should in your opinion be addressed? Which provisions should not be amended? (optional)

Should "soft law" measures be taken possibly in addition to a modification of the Directive, such as Commission guidance or recommendations, regarding the application / interpretation of the PSI Directive? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, which "soft law" measures would you favour? (optional)

== Substance ==

=== Scope (Article 1) ===

Currently, the PSI Directive is not applicable to information held by cultural, educational and research establishments and public service broadcasters. In your opinion, as far as information is not covered by third party intellectual property rights (excluded in any case from the scope of the PSI Directive), should the Directive apply to information held by

public service broadcasters? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

educational and research establishments? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

cultural establishments? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

Could you please indicate reasons for or against the inclusion of information held by these establishments? What would be the benefits / difficulties if the scope was extended to cover such information? Are there certain data sets, if not all, held by these establishments that could be valuable for developing new services or applications and that should be made available to re-use? (optional)

=== Definitions (Article 2) ===

Do you think that the definitions of the PSI Directive cause problems and should be amended or clarified? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please indicate which definitions / problems, and how they could be clarified / addressed? (optional)

=== General principle (Article 3) ===

Do you think that all public sector information which is already publicly accessible should also be re-usable? (optional)

* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

In your opinion, what would be the advantages / disadvantages of this? (optional)

=== Processing of requests (Article 4) ===

Do you think that the requirements applicable to the processing of re-use requests should be tightened or clarified? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, how should this be done? (optional)

=== Available formats (Article 5) ===

In your opinion, should more re-use friendly formats (e.g. machine readable) be promoted? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please specify which formats and how? (optional)

=== Charging (Article 6) ===

In your opinion, public sector information should be made available for re-use

at charges based on full cost recovery, together with a reasonable return on investment? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

at charges based on full cost recovery? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

at charges based on partial cost recovery? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

at marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the documents? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

at marginal costs as the basic rule with certain limited exceptions? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

for free as regards both commercial and non-commercial re-use? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

for free as regards non-commercial re-use? (optional)
* agree strongly
* agree
* no opinion
* disagree
* disagree strongly

What would be the benefits of charging based on marginal costs? What could be the disadvantages? (optional)

What could be the exceptions to a default rule of marginal costs? (optional)

Do you think that the current rules on charging (allowing full cost recovery, together with a reasonable return on investment) should be tightened and/or clarified in respect of how much re-users can be charged? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, in what way? (optional)

=== Transparency (Article 7) ===

Do you think that the current transparency rules regarding conditions and standard charges for re-use of PSI should be changed / clarified? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please indicate how you think this should be done? (optional)

=== Licences (Article 8) ===

Do current licensing regimes of Member States or of individual public sector bodies still create problems for re-use (e.g. by imposing unfair conditions or by unduly restricting the possibilities for re-use)? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, what can be done to address these issues? (optional)

=== Practical arrangements (Article 9) ===

Do you think that more measures should be taken to facilitate the search for documents available for re-use? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, which measures? (optional)

=== Non-discrimination (Article 10) ===

In your opinion, have the current rules on non-discrimination caused problems in practice and should they be tightened / clarified to foster fair trading conditions? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please specify how you think this should be done? (optional)

=== Prohibition of exclusive arrangements (Article 11) ===

Do you think that exclusive arrangements are a problem and that more measures should be taken to address them? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please specify which? (optional)

== Practical measures ==

Should the Commission encourage deployment measures at national level such as exchange of good practices, awareness raising and/or practical measures facilitating re-use? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please indicate which deployment measures? (optional)

Should the Commission promote practical measures such as national portals (like the www.data.gov.uk or the www.data.gov in the US) with a strong political drive towards opening up the wealth of public sector data? (optional)

* yes
* no

If yes, could you please specify which measures? (optional)

== General issues ==

What changes in policy of Member States and/or public sector bodies regarding re-use of public sector information have you noticed since the adoption of the PSI Directive in 2003? (optional)

What have been the positive effects of the PSI Directive and of these changes? Please give also figures on growth in terms of turnover, staff, number of clients, downloads etc., where possible. (optional)

What are the remaining barriers to re-use (availability of information, charging, licensing conditions, etc.)? (optional)

Would you have any other comments or input that you wish to give regarding the review of the PSI Directive? (optional)

Italiano Chapter Report 2009 05 09

2010-01-18T16:52:38Z

Wiki-Steko:

to be removed

Italiano Chapter Report 2008

2010-01-18T16:51:51Z

Wiki-Steko:

== Italian Chapter ==

* Contact name: '''Massimo di Stefano'''

=== Key Accomplishments ===

* substantial grassroots activities (with 20 events in one year, mostly in Northern and Central Italy)
* First edition of the GFOSS day held in Pontedera in November (130 participants). The event does not replace the traditional GRASS/GFOSS meeting, typically held in the first months of the year with a focus on research & development and a strong participation of the academic community.
* media coverage, with presence in radio and magazines.
* increase in registered members
* Formal action towards the National Statistics Institute, in response to a tender which presented issues in the possibility of proposing FOSS solutions. This action is being conducted with the support of ASSOLI, another association for the promotion of free software.
* ECDL GIS: preparation of a test for GIS certification, based on QGIS, for the ECDL Foundation
* substantial support to the OpenStreetMap project in the first part of 2008 (January-July)
* liaison to other organizations and institutions (OpenStreetMap, Italian PostgreSQL user group)
* election of new board (February)

=== Areas for Improvement ===
* OSGEO liaison can be further consolidated (new liaison officer appointed in Feb 2009)
* some administrative issues still to be cleared

=== Opportunities to Help ===
* not immediately identified. Stay tuned for announcements from our community on the OSGEO mailing lists.

=== Outlook for 2009 ===

* Hackmeetings are in the process of being planned. We expect to hold one or two events during 2009.
* Second edition of the GFOSS day to be held in Bolzano, 11 Nov 2009
* Interest in providing additional momentum in Italy, and in connection with other European chapters, towards FOSS4G 2010

__notoc__
[[Category: Reports 2008]]
[[Category:Italian Local Chapter]]

Italiano Chapter Report 2007

2010-01-18T16:51:36Z

Wiki-Steko:

= Italian Local Chapter =
* Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
* Contact name: Massimiliano Cannata --[[User:Maxi71|Maxi71]] 11:55, 22 February 2008 (EST)

== Key Accomplishments ==
*“back office”/administrative management
* Wiki, IRC, mailing list, web site (on Drupal) set-up and maintenance
* production of howtos, help ecc.
* created a debian.gfoss.it package
* GIS Certification - endorsed by ECDL Foundation, (The European Computer Driving License (ECDL) is the European-wide qualification demonstrating competence in computer skills.) - almost completed.
* work on open geodata
** conversion to WFS of Italian place name database by the National Statistical Office (ISTAT)
** participation to petitions and license definition
* Support to OpenStreetMap mapping parties (Merano, Pavia, Arezzo, Perugia)
* Extension of contact network (OpenStreetMap, Italian PostgreSQL User Group, identification of almost 2000 recipients for monthly e-mail updates)
* Public relations
** presence in the media (radio -including a live interview from a major national station, journals, newspapers)
** developed presentation material (flyer, presentation layout, Youtube spot, gadgets)
* started the population of the Italian web service on FOSS4G users (mapserver, grass, pmapper, etc...)

== Areas for Improvement ==
* try to set up a more effective decision making process, with well-defined activity areas and teams

== Opportunities to Help ==
* Have OSGeo educational material, courses and tutorial for the different OSGeo projects.
:This in order to organize workshops at the Italian annual meeting and disseminate OSGeo products
* Have a task and priorities list of OSGeo expected outputs.
:Such a kind of list could be helpful to better coordinate the Local Chapter activities with the OSGeo goals and to focus the resources where are more needed.

== Outlook for 2008 ==
* 2008 will be the year of promotion.
:In Feb. 2007 we started to set up the Italian association gfoss.it and we had to manage many administrative aspects. Then we worked on organization task, in order to set up rules and procedures (members, sponsors, site, etc.). In Sept. 2007, we became the "Italian official Chapter", approved by the OSGeo board.
:The next year will be dedicated in promoting OSGeo projects trough Italian geocommunity and administrative offices.
* 2008 Italian OSGeo meeting.
:We are working to organize the first OSGeo/gfoss.it meeting, in addition to the traditional Italian GRASS user meeting.
* 2008 increase the number of members.
:In 2007 we had a continuous positive trend in members subscription (with a fee currently set at 30 Euro). Currently members are about 25% of the Italian gfoss.it mailing list users: in the next year we hope to reach a 50%

[[Category: Reports 2007]]
[[Category:Italian Local Chapter]]

Category:Italian Local Chapter

2010-01-18T16:50:52Z

Wiki-Steko: New page: Pages about the Italian Local Chapter.

Pages about the Italian Local Chapter.

Italiano

2010-01-18T16:22:07Z

Wiki-Steko:

[[Local_Chapters|<< Back to the Local Chapters page]]

== About the Italian OSGeo Chapter and GFOSS.it ==
The Italian OSGeo Local Chapter was formally accepted by the OSGeo Board of Directors at the [[Twenty Eighth Board Meeting| September 7, 2007 meeting]].

The Italian OSGeo Local Chapter is based on the existing association "Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera (Gfoss.it)".

[http://www.GFOSS.it GFOSS.it] was founded by the Italian GFOSS community during the 8th GRASS e GFOSS (Palermo, February 14-16, 2007) annual meeting. The Italian community includes many professional, university and government members with long national and international experience in the field of the Geomatics and Free and Open Source Software.

The objectives of the GFOSS.it are:
* Promote the development, the diffusion and the protection of Free and Open Source Software for geo-informatics.
* Promote Open Standards for geo-informatics and the free access to geographic data.
* Promote contact among developers and users within the community and between the community and external bodies.
* Foster and coordinate the translation, localization and internationalization of software and documentation for geo-informatics.
* Promote relationships with other national and international associations, and with government agencies and private companies.

=== Annual reports ===

* [[Italiano_Chapter_Report_2007|2007]]
* [[Italiano_Chapter_Report_2008|2008]]
* [[Italiano_Chapter_Report_2009|2009]]

==Italian chapter mission==
Italian Local Chapter mission is to respect [[#Guidelines|OSGeo Guidelines]] on local chapters and continue supporting all [[#Italian_community_contributions| Italian Community contributions]] to FOSS GIS community. Main goal is that of the OSGeo foundation: to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led projects.

==Italian community contributions and resources==
This part shows the Italian community contributions on the web:
===Community===
* [http://www.gfoss.it GFOSS site] - the site of the first italian Geospatial Free and Open Source Software community.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it GFOSS wiki] - the wiki page of GFOSS.it, contains many howto in italian and other resources.
* [http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/ GFOSS mailing list] - the first meeting point of the community.
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://grass-italia.como.polimi.it/ Italian GRASS users site]
* [http://listserv.unipr.it/mailman/listinfo/grass-italia Italian GRASS users mailing list]

===Data===
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/download#outline_regioni_d_italia_e_grecia Italian and greek VMAP0 elaboration] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://www.dirap.unipa.it/~scianna/gis_software.htm Fedora and Debian GRASS Packages] - contribution by Andrea Scianna
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/strade Italian Open Street project] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://debian-gfoss.rigacci.org/ a Debian Free GIS repository] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://gentoo-gis.sourceforge.net/ Gentoo Gis Overlay] - Emiliano Valvassori e Luca Casagrande

===Contents===
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Guida_Utente_QGIS_in_italiano Qgis 0.7 User Manual] - The italian translation. Complete (newer version available on the QGIS web site).
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GRASS_6.0.2_Reference_Manual GRASS 6.2 Reference Manual] - The italian translation. Still a lot to be done.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GFOSS_presentazioni GFOSS presentations] - A repository of links to presentations on Gis FOSS.
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/corsi/sw_gis Many useful university courses slides] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano].
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/workbooks Geomatic Workbooks] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano] (free registration).
*[http://grass.itc.it/ GRASS GIS main site] - from [http://mpa.itc.it L'Istituto Trentino di Cultura - IRST].
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/software.html GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license] - Available GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license.
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/documents.html Online GIS documents at the University of Trento] - GFOSS Tutorials and other documents at the University of Trento.

[[Category:Local Chapters]]

== Events ==

===Past Events===

* (2000) 1. Italian GRASS Meeting at Como, Italy
* (2001) [http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/conferences/GRASS2001/grass_days_2001/en/grass_meeting_trento_1-2_2_2001.html 2. Italian GRASS Meeting] at University of Trento, Italy, February 1-2 2001
* (2002) 3. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Trieste, Italy
* (2002) [http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/conferences/GRASS2002/home.html Open Source Free Software GIS - GRASS users conference], Trento, Italy, 11-13 Sept. 2002
* (2003) [http://www.masterleaves.unifi.it/grass/default.htm 4. Italian GRASS Meeting] at University of Firenze, Italy, 13-14 Feb 2003
* (2004) 5. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Padova, Italy
* (2005) 6. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Rome, Italy
* (2006) 7. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Genova, Italy
* (2007) [http://gislab.dirap.unipa.it/grass_meeting/index.htm 8th GRASS and GFOSS annual Meeting] - February 14-15-16 2007, Palermo University.
* (2008) [http://www.grassmeeting2008.unipg.it/ 9th GRASS-GFOSS user meeting, Perugia, Faculy of Engineering]
* (2008) [http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/convegno/ 1st GFOSS day ], Pontedera
* (2009) [http://gfoss2009.crs4.it 10th GRASS GFOSS Italian user meeting] - 26-27 February 2009, Cagliari

===Future Events===
[http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday GFOSS DAY 2009] - 11-12 November 2009, Bolzano (Italy)

[http://istgeo.ist.supsi.ch/site/foss4g-it 11th GRASS FOSS4G Italian language user meeting] - 11-12 February 2010, Lugano (Switzerland)

== Meetings ==
Regular meetings of the GFOSS.it association Steering Board are held by IRC channel. 
The minutes of the meetings can be found at: https://www.gfoss.it/drupal/taxonomy/term/1 (access to this page is reserved to GFOSS.it members) 

The annual meeting of the GFOSS.it is held within the Annual GRASS GFOSS Italian user conference.

== Italian OSGeo Chapter Officers ==

====Italian OSGeo Representative====
GFOSS.it Steering Board (Consiglio direttivo) 

Address: Como c/o il Politecnico di Milano - Sede di Como 

E-mail: info at gfoss dot it

Members of current Board of Counsellors: https://www.gfoss.it/drupal/node/40

====Italian OSGeo Chapter Coordinators====
A delegate of the GFOSS.it association is elected by the Board for each mandate.

The current "liason officer" role is: covered by Massimo Di Stefano, Paolo Cavallini, Andrea Giacomelli, Stefano Costa, Luca Casagrande.

In general: the liaison officer/s can be reached through the address: osgeo_liaison_officer (at) gfoss.it

== Charter member ==

{| border=1
! style="background:#efefef;" | numero tessera !! style="background:#efefef;" | Nome !! style="background:#efefef;" | Cognome
|-
|1||Maria Antonia||Brovelli
|-
|2||Massimiliano||Cannata
|-
|3||Paolo||Cavallini
|-
|4||Marco||Ciolli
|-
|5||Massimo||Di Stefano
|-
|6||Alessandro||Frigeri
|-
|7||Andrea||Giacomelli
|-
|8||Leonardo|||Lami
|-
|9||Diego||Magni
|-
|10||Ivan||Marchesini
|-
|11||Marco||Negretti
|-
|12||Markus||Neteler
|-
|13||Luigi||Pirelli
|-
|14||Daniele||Scarselli
|-
|15||Andrea||Scianna
|-
|16||Clara||Tattoni
|-
|17||Emilia||Venturato
|-
|18||Paolo||Zatelli
|}

Currently GFOSS.it counts 77 associated members.----[[User:Maxi71|Maxi71]] 07:55, 11 February 2008 (EST)

[[Category:Italian Local Chapter]]

Italiano Chapter Report 2009

2010-01-18T16:20:09Z

Wiki-Steko:

=== DRAFT ===

== Italian Chapter ==

*Contact name: '''Massimo di Stefano'''

=== Key Accomplishments ===

*Substantial grassroots activities (numerous events in one year, following the numerous events in the previous years)
*slowly increase in registered members
*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].

=== 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 :

*[1] - http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.osgeo.org/msg03652.html
*[2] - http://www.archeo-foss.org/
*[3] - http://barcamp.org/materacamp09
*[4] - http://www.bettersoftware.it/conference/talks/il-mondo-delle-imprese-e-lopen-source-gis
*[5] - http://osmit.fbk.eu/
*[6] - http://www.confsl.org/confsl09/
*[7] - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Genova#M.28.27.29appare_Portofino_2_-_La_conclusione
*[8] - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Hacking_Event_2009
*[9] - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Dolomiti_mapping_party
*[10] - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
*[11] - http://2009.foss4g.org/
*[12] - http://www.itnexpo.it/it/
*[13] - http://evora.sigaberto.org/
*[14] - http://www.qgis.org/wiki/2._QGIS_Hackfest_in_Vienna_2009
*[15] - http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday
*[16] - http://www.rivistageomedia.it/it.html & http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Rivista_geomedia
*[17] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023165994 http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/V.krige_GSoC_2009
*[18] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023166969 http://web.me.com/epiesasha/PlanetSasha/Project.html
*[19] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023167390 http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca/wiki/doku.php?id=gsoc2009_weekly_reports_giovanni_onofri
*[20] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023163767 http://jgrass.wiki.software.bz.it/jgrass/Google_Summer_Of_Code_2009

 __notoc__

[[Category:Reports_2009]]
[[Category:Italian Local Chapter]]

Italiano Chapter Report 2009

2010-01-18T13:20:14Z

Wiki-Steko:

=== DRAFT ===

== Italian Chapter ==

* Contact name: '''Massimo di Stefano'''

=== Key Accomplishments ===

* Substantial grassroots activities (numerous events in one year, following the numerous events in the previous years)
* slowly increase in registered members
* 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].

=== 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 :

* [1] - http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@lists.osgeo.org/msg03652.html
* [2] - http://www.archeo-foss.org/
* [3] - http://barcamp.org/materacamp09
* [4] - http://www.bettersoftware.it/conference/talks/il-mondo-delle-imprese-e-lopen-source-gis
* [5] - http://osmit.fbk.eu/
* [6] - http://www.confsl.org/confsl09/
* [7] - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Genova#M.28.27.29appare_Portofino_2_-_La_conclusione
* [8] - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Hacking_Event_2009
* [9] - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Dolomiti_mapping_party
* [10] - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
* [11] - http://2009.foss4g.org/
* [12] - http://www.itnexpo.it/it/
* [13] - http://evora.sigaberto.org/
* [14] - http://www.qgis.org/wiki/2._QGIS_Hackfest_in_Vienna_2009
* [15] - http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday
* [16] - http://www.rivistageomedia.it/it.html & http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Rivista_geomedia
* [17] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023165994 http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/V.krige_GSoC_2009
* [18] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023166969 http://web.me.com/epiesasha/PlanetSasha/Project.html
* [19] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023167390 http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca/wiki/doku.php?id=gsoc2009_weekly_reports_giovanni_onofri
* [20] - http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/osgeo/t124023163767 http://jgrass.wiki.software.bz.it/jgrass/Google_Summer_Of_Code_2009

__notoc__
[[Category: Reports 2009]]

User:Steko

2009-03-04T18:17:30Z

Wiki-Steko:

for more information: http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Utente:Steko

{{#umSetParam: 8.932661|44.411156|Genoa, Italy|Stefano Costa|Steko}}

Talk:Drupal Upgrade Plan 2008

2008-06-17T12:48:33Z

Wiki-Steko: New page: Please note that the current 5.x version is 5.7.--~~~~

Please note that the current 5.x version is 5.7.--[[User:Steko|steko]] 08:48, 17 June 2008 (EDT)

OSGeo Hacking event

2008-06-11T08:59:26Z

Wiki-Steko: Stefano Costa

== OSGeo Hacking event in a monastry near Bolsena (16-22 June 2008) ==
; [[Event Owner]]: [[User:ticheler | Jeroen Ticheler]]
; When: 16-22 June 2008
; Where: [http://tinyurl.com/2t6zby Bolsena - Italy]

We will have an OSGeo "hacking" event in an [http://www.conventobolsena.org/ Italian monastry] ([http://tinyurl.com/2t6zby here]). The monastry is overlooking Lago Bolsena and offers space to about 25 people in small bedrooms :-) . Its probably one of the coolest places for such an event. Quiet, isolated, simple and serene. There's a good wireless and wired internet connection, although I wouldn't bet my hand on it if we all start to download satellite images. It should be perfect for SVN, IRC and mail. Have a look yourself, including looking at the photo gallery.

The cost will be about 200 Euro per person for the week.

For what the food concerns, there will be a cook who will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30 Euro per person per day. There's a large dining space, but we will eat outside overlooking the lake if weather permits (very likely in June).

We'll discuss other technicalities as they come up, i.e. assistance if you need to rent a car, organize to travel together, public transport etc... Please feel free to use this WIKI page for that or create a sub page.

The event will take place during the whole week (7 days).

Please contact me if you have questions about this event ([[User:ticheler |Jeroen Ticheler]])

=== Interested? Sign up here ===

'''All rooms are full, so you can't sign up anymore for a room. You are welcome during the days, but you will have to organize your own accommodation'''

Those participating, you will need to make and advance payment of 100 Euro to me to guarantee your place. Please contact me privately by email so we can arrange that. I've no problems if you later need to change as long as you make sure there's someone taking your place :-)

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" class="wikitable"
!width="250"|Name
!width="250"|Projects
!width="150"|single/double room?
!width="150"|Should we organize a cook?
!width="150"|Outdoor activities? [1]
!width="200"|Confirmed/tentative?
!width="150"|Advance paid?
|-
|[[User:ticheler|Jeroen Ticheler]] || [[GeoNetwork]] & [[Marketing]] || double ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:ominiverdi|Lorenzo Becchi]] || ka-Map & OpenLayers || single ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:heikki|Heikki Doeleman]] || [[GeoNetwork]] || single ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]] || [[Mapbender]] & [[Marketing]] || double ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:Fxp|Francois Prunayre]]|| [[GeoNetwork]] || still don't know || yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:SimonPigot|Simon Pigot]]|| [[GeoNetwork]] || single || yes || || confirmed ||
|-
|[[Kate Roberts]]|| [[GeoNetwork]] || single || yes || || tentative ||
|-
|[[User:Moovida | Andrea Antonello]]|| [http://www.jgrass.org JGrass] || single || yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:Silli | Silvia Franceschi]]|| [http://www.jgrass.org JGrass] & [[Marketing]] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Daniele Andreis|| [http://www.jgrass.org JGrass] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|6 * GeoServer devs||[http://geoserver.org GeoServer] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:jacarma | Javier Carrasco]]|| [http://www.gvsig.gva.es/index.php?id=gvsig&L=2 gvSIG] & gvSIG Mobile || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
| Juan Lucas Dominguez || [http://www.gvsig.gva.es/index.php?id=gvsig&L=2 gvSIG] & gvSIG Mobile || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|[[User:volaya | Victor Olaya]] || [http://www.sextantegis.com SEXTANTE] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
| [[User:Landa|Martin Landa]] || [http://grass.osgeo.org GRASS GIS] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Giuseppe Onorevoli||[http://www.jgrass.org JGrass]|| single || yes || || Confirmed (no room reserved!) ||
|-
|Patrizia Monteduro|| [http://geonetwork-opensource.org Geonetwork] || no need || no || ||couple of days ||
|-
|[[User:simboss|Simone Giannecchini]] || [[GeoTools]] & [http://geoserver.org GeoServer] (& [http://www.gdal.org GDAL] SWIG Java) || double (?) ||yes || || confirmed (not the whole week though)||
|-
|[[User:afabiani|Alessio Fabiani]] || [[GeoTools]] & [http://geoserver.org GeoServer] || single ||yes || || confirmed||
|-
|[[User:danieler|Daniele Romagnoli]] || [[GeoTools]] (& [http://www.gdal.org GDAL] SWIG Java) || single ||yes || || confirmed||
|-
|[[User:sgiaccio|Stefano Giaccio]] || [[GeoNetwork]] || single ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|Emanuele Tajariol || [[GeoNetwork]] || single ||yes || || confirmed || x
|-
|Mark Small || [[EDINA]] || single ||yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Michael koutroumpas || [[EDINA]] || single ||yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Diego Guidi || [[MapServer]],[[GeoServer]],[[GvSig]] || ||yes || || tentative ||
|-
|Paolo Corti || [[MapServer]],[[GeoServer]],[[GDAL]],[[FeatureServer]] || ||yes || || tentative ||
|-
|José García || [[gvSIG]] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Grant McKenzie || [[GeoNetwork]] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Mathieu Coudert || [[GeoNetwork]] || single || yes || || Confirmed || x
|-
|Andrea Giacomelli||[[GeoNetwork]] || not required - expected to show up on day trip || || || Tentative ||
|-
|Stefano Costa|| on behalf of [http://www.gfoss.it/ GFOSS.it] || not required - expected to show up on day trip (Monday 16th) || || || Confirmed ||
|-
|''copy and paste this to add yourself''|| || || || || ||
|-
|}

: [1] there are options to do outdoor activities like tracking. A guide can be organized and the cost is very reasonable.

=== How to arrive to the Monastry ===

The closest airports are the Roma airports (Ciampino and Fiumincino).

From Rome to the monastry there is 135 km aproximately.

There is no railway to Bolsena.

From Rome you can take a bus (cotral http://www.cotralspa.it/ENG/capolinea.asp) to Viterbo and other bus from viterbo to Bolsena.

Monday to Friday there is a bus each hour but Sunday there are very few buses.

From Bolsena main street to the Monastry is aproximately 1 km.

It could be interesting to rent a private bus or several cars to move from Rome to the Monastry and from the Monastry to Rome.

If you are interested in share vehicle please add your name to the following table and the columns you need for new ideas.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" class="wikitable"
!width="250"|Name
!width="150"|I prefer to rent a bus
!width="150"|I prefer to share rented car
!width="150"|I'll go with my car and I have free seats
|-
| Javier Carrasco || X || ||
|-
| Juan Lucas Dominguez || X || ||
|-
| José García || X || ||
|-
| Michael Koutroumpas || X || ||
|-
| Mark Small || X || ||
|-
| Grant McKenzie || X || ||
|-
| Heikki Doeleman || X || X ||
|-

|''copy and paste this to add yourself''|| || ||
|}

[[Category:Events]]
[[Category:Code Sprints]]

OSGeo Cartographic Engine

2008-04-07T11:17:48Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Existing code to be recycled */

== Motivation ==

There are plans about new cartographic tools (map composer) for QGIS, as well as for GRASS. We suggest to develop a joint library for the various functions which could be shared across GRASS, QGIS and other projects with bindings to Qt, Python etc. The GUI part will be done within the individual software projects.

== Functionality ==

Shared functions may include

* break for classes (various algorithms)
* histogram analysis
* color ramps
* RGB and possibly CYMK support (aka color transformations) etc.
* Algorithms for intelligent label placement
* Symbology management

== Programming Language ==

* C? C++?

== Existing code to be recycled ==

There will be code in GRASS, QGIS, the Python Cartographic Library (http://zcologia.org/cartography) and other sources which could be integrated (check license compatibility).

* Label placement code:
** Mapserver [http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/browser/trunk/mapserver/maplabel.c labeling code] (MapServer License, C language)
** GRASS [http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/trunk/vector/v.label.sa v.label.sa] (GPL, C language)
* Color management:
** MapGuide, [http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/browser/trunk/MgDev/Server/src/Services/Feature/FeatureNumericFunctions.cpp CalculateDistribution] and [http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/browser/trunk/MgDev/Common/PlatformBase/Data/Color.cpp Color] (LGPL.C++)
** OpenJump ?
* Stylization:

== License ==

It is proposed to license the OSGeo Cartographic Library under LGPL. The license needs to be GPL compliant.

== Interested people ==

* [[User:Neteler|Markus Neteler]] (proposer)
* Horst Düster
* [[User:Landa|Martin Landa]]
* [[User:MarcoHugentobler|Marco Hugentobler]]
* Frank Warmerdam

[[Category: Software Stack]]

Italiano

2008-02-27T17:52:35Z

Wiki-Steko: added link to 2007 annual report

[[Local_Chapters|<< Back to the Local Chapters page]]

== About the Italian OSGeo Chapter and GFOSS.it ==
The Italian OSGeo Local Chapter was formally accepted by the OSGeo Board of Directors at the [[Twenty Eighth Board Meeting| September 7, 2007 meeting]].

The Italian OSGeo Local Chapter is based on the existing association "Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera (Gfoss.it)".

[http://www.GFOSS.it GFOSS.it] was founded by the Italian GFOSS community during the 8th GRASS e GFOSS (Palermo, February 14-16, 2007) annual meeting. The Italian community includes many professional, university and government members with long national and international experience in the field of the Geomatics and Free and Open Source Software.

The objectives of the GFOSS.it are:
* Promote the development, the diffusion and the protection of Free and Open Source Software for geo-informatics.
* Promote Open Standards for geo-informatics and the free access to geographic data.
* Promote contact among developers and users within the community and between the community and external bodies.
* Foster and coordinate the translation, localization and internationalization of software and documentation for geo-informatics.
* Promote relationships with other national and international associations, and with government agencies and private companies.

=== Annual reports ===

* [[Italiano_Chapter_Report_2007|2007]]

==Italian chapter mission==
Italian Local Chapter mission is to respect [[#Guidelines|OSGeo Guidelines]] on local chapters and continue supporting all [[#Italian_community_contributions| Italian Community contributions]] to FOSS GIS community. Main goal is that of the OSGeo foundation: to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led projects.

==Italian community contributions and resources==
This part shows the Italian community contributions on the web:
===Community===
* [http://www.gfoss.it GFOSS site] - the site of the first italian Geospatial Free and Open Source Software community.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it GFOSS wiki] - the wiki page of GFOSS.it, contains many howto in italian and other resources.
* [http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/ GFOSS mailing list] - the first meeting point of the community.
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://grass-italia.como.polimi.it/ Italian GRASS users site]
* [http://listserv.unipr.it/mailman/listinfo/grass-italia Italian GRASS users mailing list]

===Data===
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/download#outline_regioni_d_italia_e_grecia Italian and greek VMAP0 elaboration] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://www.dirap.unipa.it/~scianna/gis_software.htm Fedora and Debian GRASS Packages] - contribution by Andrea Scianna
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/strade Italian Open Street project] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://debian-gfoss.rigacci.org/ a Debian Free GIS repository] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://gentoo-gis.sourceforge.net/ Gentoo Gis Overlay] - Emiliano Valvassori e Luca Casagrande

===Contents===
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Guida_Utente_QGIS_in_italiano Qgis 0.7 User Manual] - The italian translation. Complete (newer version available on the QGIS web site).
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GRASS_6.0.2_Reference_Manual GRASS 6.2 Reference Manual] - The italian translation. Still a lot to be done.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GFOSS_presentazioni GFOSS presentations] - A repository of links to presentations on Gis FOSS.
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/corsi/sw_gis Many useful university courses slides] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano].
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/workbooks Geomatic Workbooks] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano] (free registration).
*[http://grass.itc.it/ GRASS GIS main site] - from [http://mpa.itc.it L'Istituto Trentino di Cultura - IRST].
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/software.html GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license] - Available GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license.
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/documents.html Online GIS documents at the University of Trento] - GFOSS Tutorials and other documents at the University of Trento.

[[Category:Local Chapters]]

== Events ==

===Past Events===

* (2000) 1. Italian GRASS Meeting at Como, Italy
* (2001) [http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/conferences/GRASS2001/grass_days_2001/en/grass_meeting_trento_1-2_2_2001.html 2. Italian GRASS Meeting] at University of Trento, Italy, February 1-2 2001
* (2002) 3. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Trieste, Italy
* (2002) [http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/conferences/GRASS2002/home.html Open Source Free Software GIS - GRASS users conference], Trento, Italy, 11-13 Sept. 2002
* (2003) [http://www.masterleaves.unifi.it/grass/default.htm 4. Italian GRASS Meeting] at University of Firenze, Italy, 13-14 Feb 2003
* (2004) 5. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Padova, Italy
* (2005) 6. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Rome, Italy
* (2006) 7. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Genova, Italy
* (2007) [http://gislab.dirap.unipa.it/grass_meeting/index.htm VIII GRASS and GFOSS annual Meeting] - February 14-15-16 2007, Palermo University.
* (2008) Perugia

===Future Events===
IX GRASS-GFOSS Italian users meeting. 
21st, 22nd February 2008 
Facoltà di Ingegneria dell'Università di Perugia 
Perugia, Italy

== Meetings ==
Regular meetings of the GFOSS.it association Steering Board are held by IRC channel. 
The minutes of the meetings can be found at: https://www.gfoss.it/drupal/taxonomy/term/1 

The annual meeting of the GFOSS.it is held within the Annual GRASS GFOSS Italian user conference.

== Italian OSGeo Chapter Officers ==

====Italian OSGeo Representative====
GFOSS.it Steering Board (Consiglio direttivo) 

Address: Como c/o il Politecnico di Milano - Sede di Como 

E-mail: info at gfoss dot it

Members of current Board of Counsellors: https://www.gfoss.it/drupal/node/40

====Italian OSGeo Chapter Coordinators====
A delegate of the GFOSS.it association is elected by the Board for each mandate.

The current "liason officer" is: Massimiliano Cannata, massimiliano.cannata at supsi dot ch

== Charter member ==

{| border=1
! style="background:#efefef;" | numero tessera !! style="background:#efefef;" | Nome !! style="background:#efefef;" | Cognome
|-
|1||Maria Antonia||Brovelli
|-
|2||Massimiliano||Cannata
|-
|3||Paolo||Cavallini
|-
|4||Marco||Ciolli
|-
|5||Massimo||Di Stefano
|-
|6||Alessandro||Frigeri
|-
|7||Andrea||Giacomelli
|-
|8||Leonardo|||Lami
|-
|9||Diego||Magni
|-
|10||Ivan||Marchesini
|-
|11||Marco||Negretti
|-
|12||Markus||Neteler
|-
|13||Luigi||Pirelli
|-
|14||Daniele||Scarselli
|-
|15||Andrea||Scianna
|-
|16||Clara||Tattoni
|-
|17||Emilia||Venturato
|-
|18||Paolo||Zatelli
|}

Currently GFOSS.it counts 77 associated members.----[[User:Maxi71|Maxi71]] 07:55, 11 February 2008 (EST)

OSGeo Hacking event

2008-02-06T20:00:31Z

Wiki-Steko: just trying out new table style http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/196

== OSGeo Hacking event in a monastry near Bolsena (Spring 2008) ==

[[User:ticheler | I, Jeroen]], have been thinking of getting an OSGeo "hacking" or code sprint event setup in an [http://www.conventobolsena.org/ Italian monastry] ([http://tinyurl.com/2t6zby here]). Friends of mine take care of the place which is overlooking Lago Bolsena and offers space to 25 people in small bedrooms :-) . Its probably one of the coolest places for such an event. Quiet, isolated and serene. There's a good wireless and wired internet connection, although I wouldn't bet my hand on it if we all start to download satellite images. It should be perfect for SVN, IRC and mail.

The cost would be about 200 Euro per person for the week (food not included, we can organize that separately). There's a large kitchen and large dining space. Obviously since the weather most likely permits, we would eat outside overlooking the lake. Have a look yourself, including looking at the photo gallery.

If you are interested, please sign up below? Looking at availability of the place, best would be June or possibly in May (not always available!).

If there's enough interest I can make a booking. There would be 7 days time, so it can also be divided into smaller time chunks that are occupied by different projects.

As soon as there's a clearly preferred week, I will try to block that one. Please indicate multiple weeks if you have the flexibility.

=== Interested? Sign up here ===

Beside the below listed weeks, there are also options in August and September, so if there's a large group that wants to use the place then, let me know or simply add a column.
The periods fall in 11 - 29 August and 9 - 30 September.

{| border="1" cellpadding="2" class="wikitable"
!width="250"|Name
!width="250"|Projects
!width="200"|Week 1: 29 April-5 May [1]
!width="200"|Week 2: 9-15 June [2]
!width="200"|Week 3: 16-22 June
!width="150"|single/double room?
!width="150"|Should we organize a cook?
!width="150"|Outdoor activities? [3]
!width="200"|Confirmed/tentative?
|-
|[[User:ticheler|Jeroen Ticheler]] || [[GeoNetwork]] & [[Marketing]] || third choice || second choice || first choice || double ||yes || || Confirmed
|-
|[[User:ominiverdi|Lorenzo Becchi]] || || still don't know || || || still don't know ||yes || || tentative
|-
|[[User:heikki|Heikki Doeleman]] || [[GeoNetwork]] || still don't know || || || still don't know ||yes || || tentative
|-
|[[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]] || [[Mapbender]] & [[Marketing]] || || || first choice || double ||yes || || Confirmed
|-
|[[User:Fxp|Francois Prunayre]]|| [[GeoNetwork]] || || || first choice || still don't know || yes || || Confirmed
|-
|[[User:Mloskot|Mateusz Loskot]]|| || first choice || second choice || || double || yes or optionally || || Tentative
|-
|''copy and paste this to add yourself''|| || || || || || || ||
|}

: [1] on the 5th, checkout from the rooms is in the morning
: [2] the regular OGC meeting takes place June 2nd - June 7th, 2008 in Potsdam, Germany
: [3] there are options to do outdoor activities like tracking. A guide can be organized and the cost is very reasonable.

[[Category:Proposed Events]]
[[Category:Code Sprints]]

OSGeo Multilanguage Dictionary

2007-11-13T11:29:57Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Software platform */

''This page is a proposal''

== Multi-language OSGeo dictionary ==

The scope is to collect over the years geo* related terms in a multi-language style to facilitate reading/writing in other languages, to help with software internationalization, to help when writing proposals in non-mother-tongue languages (like me who has to write in Italian) etc.

Example (this would be a dictionary software then):

EN: landscape genetics
IT: genetica del paesaggio
DE: Landschaftsgenetik
...

Since we are an excellent group of experts covering many languages, we could run this as long-term Edu project.

Once a reasonable amount of terms is available, download should be enabled in Docbook or other formats.

== Software platform ==

We could use the Wiktionary software (http://www.wiktionary.org/) and keep it just running. Possibly an OSGeo hacker could also fetch translations from Wikipedia from a handcrafted terms collection of terms to populate an initial dictionary (using the box on the left side which references translations).

* Wiktionary is just using MediaWiki as all other WikiMedia sites (and this OSGeo wiki too). So, very easy to run.--[[User:Steko|steko]] 06:29, 13 November 2007 (EST)

== Interested people ==

* [[User:Neteler|Markus Neteler]]
* Landon Blake (A.K.A. - The Sunburned Surveyor)

== Existing related free dictionaries ==

* [http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_Translation_Glossary GRASS Translation Glossary]
* ...

[[Category: Education]]

Main Page

2007-09-19T17:07:21Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Software Related */ Software Translation Portal

''Meet at the [[FOSS4G 2007]] conference in Victoria, BC, Canada.''

[[Image:FOSS4G 2007 Logo.png|180px|thumb|right|FOSS4G 2007 Logo]]

== Introduction to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation Wiki ==

This is the community Wiki of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Please refer to [http://www.osgeo.org/ the official web site] for official documents and policies. This Wiki is the place where documents such as committee notes, discussion on software projects, and proposals can be created collaboratively.

See [[Getting Started]] for how to dive in and get involved. We have [[Local Chapters]], which work regionally and in other languages. We also have many active [[Mailing Lists]] for discussions. Take a moment to visit our [[Library]]. We have a list of email [[Contacts]] for various projects and functions.

The OSGeo has an [http://www.osgeo.org/about official structure] but the movement is much larger. You are free to join us and add yourself to the [[All Members]] page.

In November of 2006 the OSGeo accomplished a major milestone with the addition of a full time Executive Director. Tyler Mitchell was selected by the board of directors and will help to coordinate and lead the efforts of our organization. Find out more at [http://www.osgeo.org/tyler Tyler Mitchell's Blog ].

== Committees ==
The committees are part of the official structure of OSGeo. Committees meet on the [irc://irc.freenode.net/osgeo IRC] or use conference calls. [http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/ IRC logs] of previous meetings are often available. For a list of scheduled or regularly scheduled meetings of many of the committees check the [[Foundation Calendar]].

From the committees' pages you will find the missions, names of the people involved, and links to the working documents.

Although committees are official and there is an official list of members please feel free to participate!

* [[Board of Directors]] (official) - [[Board tasks]]
* [[Website Committee]] (official) - [[WebComTODO|Current WebCom tasks]]
* [[Fundraising]] Committee (official)
* [[Incubation Committee]] (official)
* [[Promotion and Visibility Committee]] (official)
* [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]] (official; maybe needs a catchier name)
* [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] (official)
* [[SAC|System Administration Committee (SAC)]] (official)
* [[Conference Committee]] (official)
* [[Certification Committee]] (not official) - ''initial ideas stage!''

== Proposals and Other Working Pages ==
This section is for new proposals which need publicity, or are not yet assigned to any committee or need broader collaboration. Once the entry here has done its work, it should be moved to a more appropriate place.

Check out the [[Special:Recentchanges]] page also (a link in the navigation menu on the left).

=== Current Issues ===
* [[OSGeo Educational Project]]
* [[Volunteers Needed]]
* [[What's Working]]
* [[What's Not Working]]

=== General OSGeo ===
* [[OSGeo.org Project Tool FAQ]]
* [[OSGeo Description]]
* [[Press Release Process]]
* [[Press Release Template]]
* OSGeo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Geospatial_Foundation Wikipedia entry]
* [[Proposed Membership Rules]]
* [[Committee Guidelines]]
* [[Contacts]] - for projects, committees, etc
* [[Protocol for requesting letter of support]]

=== Networking ===
* [[Local Chapters]]
* [[NGO Project]]
* [[Like Minded Regional Organizations]]
* [[International Outreach]]

=== Software Related ===
* [[Commercial Services]]
* [[MapGuide Open Source]]
* [[Software Translation Portal]]
* [[FDO Open Source]]
* [[Mobile Solutions]]
* [[Distribution Special Interest Groups]]
* [[AJAX WebMapping Project Request]]
* [[Choosing a Web Mapping Platform]]
* [[Programming Languages Project]]

* [[Script Repository]]
* [[Google Summer of Code]]
* [[Mapbender]]
* [[Java GIS Collaboration]]
* [[libgeos]]

== Useful Notes ==
* [[Getting Started]] will help you to find about.
* [[How to Edit]] this Wiki.
* [[How to keep Track]] of what is going on in the Wiki.
* [[OSGEO:Protected page guidelines|Protected page guidelines]]

-----
[[OSGEO:About|Wiki Site Disclaimer]]

Software Translation Portal

2007-09-19T16:59:52Z

Wiki-Steko: added some more details about pootle

It is proposed to install a unified translation portal for OSGeo projects which use "gettext" based message translations.

== Software Candidates ==

* pootle - http://pootle.wordforge.org/
** supports online message translation (much like Canonical's Rosetta, but this is free software)
** apparently supports integration of offline translated .po files
** integrates smoothly with version control systems (SVN)
* other?

== Interested OSGeo projects ==

* GRASS: [http://grass.itc.it/devel/i18n.php i18N efforts]
* Probably GDAL (users requested translated messages)
* OSSIM?
* QGIS?
* gvSIG?
* ... (please update)

[[Category:Infrastructure]]

Italiano

2007-09-18T12:58:24Z

Wiki-Steko: removed useless logo

[[Local_Chapters|<< Back to the Local Chapters page]]

== Comunità GFOSS italiana ==
E' attualmente in corso un tentativo di proporre agli utenti di lingua italiana la creazione di un Local Chapter di OSGeo ([http://GFOSS.it GFOSS.it community site]).
La discussione è sulla mailing list di GFOSS.it:
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/listinfo/gfoss/

Si invitano le persone interessate ad aggiungersi alla lista alla voce [[#Gli interessati]].

== Links==
''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Proposta_Statuto_Associazione Proposta Statuto Associazione]

==Gli interessati (people supporting this initiative)==

See [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Proposta_Statuto_Associazione#Interessati other list].

==Italian chapter mission==
Italian Local Chapter mission will be to respect [[#Guidelines|OSGeo Guidelines]] on local chapters and continue supporting all [[#Italian_community_contributions| Italian Community contributions]] to FOSS GIS community. Main goal is the OSGeo foundation one: to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led projects.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''OK'''
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''READY''' (lang:it)
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - see "gli interessati"
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - -> sent on January,27 2007.
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

==Italian community contributions==
This part shows what the italian community is already contributing on internet.
===Community===
* [http://www.gfoss.it GFOSS site] - the site of the first italian Geospatial Free and Open Source Software community.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it GFOSS wiki] - the wiki page of GFOSS.it, contains many howto in italian and other resources.
* [http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/ GFOSS mailing list] - the first meeting point of the community.
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://grass-italia.como.polimi.it/ Italian GRASS users site]
* [http://listserv.unipr.it/mailman/listinfo/grass-italia Italian GRASS users mailing list]

===Data===
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/download#outline_regioni_d_italia_e_grecia Italian and greek VMAP0 elaboration] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://www.dirap.unipa.it/~scianna/gis_software.htm Fedora and Debian GRASS Packages] - contribution by Andrea Scianna
*[http://paros.rigacci.org/wiki/doku.php/tecnica/gps_cartografia_gis/strade Italian Open Street project] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://debian-gfoss.rigacci.org/ a Debian Free GIS repository] - contribution by Niccolò Rigacci
*[http://gentoo-gis.sourceforge.net/ Gentoo Gis Overlay] - Emiliano Valvassori e Luca Casagrande

===Contents===
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Guida_Utente_QGIS_in_italiano Qgis 0.7 User Manual] - The italian translation. Complete.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GRASS_6.0.2_Reference_Manual GRASS 6.2 Reference Manual] - The italian translation. Still a lot to be done.
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/GFOSS_presentazioni GFOSS presentations] - A repository of links to presentations on Gis FOSS.
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/corsi/sw_gis Many useful university courses slides] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano].
*[http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/workbooks Geomatic Workbooks] - From [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it Geomatica, Politecnico di Milano] (free registration).
*[http://grass.itc.it/ GRASS GIS main site] - from [http://mpa.itc.it L'Istituto Trentino di Cultura - IRST].
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/software.html GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license] - Available GIS software at the University of Trento under GNU license.
*[http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/documents.html Online GIS documents at the University of Trento] - GFOSS Tutorials and other documents at the University of Trento.

===Events===
*[http://gislab.dirap.unipa.it/grass_meeting/index.htm VIII GRASS and GFOSS annual Meeting] - February 14-15-16 2007, Palermo Univesity.

[[Category:Local Chapters]]

Binary Package Listing

2007-07-27T16:52:15Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Linux packages repositories */

This page is for listing all the packages that are currently available for OSGeo projects. There is also discussion loosely relating to the creation of a [[OSGeo Binary Distribution]] and a review of various current approaches.

= Download Locations =
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" cellspacing="1" border="1" cellpadding="3"
|+ OSGeo Project Download links
|-
! Project
! Version
! Source
! Linux
! Mac OSX
! Windows
! Java
! Included in...
|-
| [http://www.qgis.org Quantum GIS] ([http://download.qgis.org/qgis/ Download])
| 0.8.0
| [http://download.qgis.org/qgis/src/qgis-0.8.0.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://download.qgis.org/qgis/suse/qgis-0.8.0-1suse10.2.i586.rpm RPM]
| [http://download.qgis.org/qgis/mac/qgis-0.8.0.dmg.gz DMG]
| [http://download.qgis.org/qgis/win32/qgis-0.8.0_setup.exe EXE]
|
|
|-
| [http://www.ossim.org OSSIM] ([http://www.ossim.org/OSSIM/Downloads.html Download])
| 1.6.8-2
| [https://svn.osgeo.org/ossim/trunk SVN]
|
| [http://ossim.telascience.org/ossimdata/MacOSX/ossim_1.6.8-2.dmg DMG]
| [http://ossim.telascience.org/ossimdata/Windows/ossim-1.6.8-2.exe EXE]
|
|
|-
| [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender] ([http://www.mapbender.org/download/ Download])
| 2.4.2 RC1
| [http://www.mapbender.org/download/mapbender_2.4.2_rc1.zip ZIP]
| [http://www.mapbender.org/download/mapbender_2.4.2_rc1.zip ZIP]
| [http://www.mapbender.org/download/mapbender_2.4.2_rc1.zip ZIP]
| [http://www.mapbender.org/download/mapbender_2.4.2_rc1.zip ZIP]
|
|
|-
| [http://www.communitymapbuilder.osgeo.org MapBuilder] ([http://communitymapbuilder.osgeo.org/display/MAP/Downloads Download])
| 1.5 Alpha 1
| [http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mapbuilder/mapbuilder-lib-src-1.5-alpha1.zip ZIP]
| [http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mapbuilder/mapbuilder-lib-1.5-alpha1.zip ZIP]
| [http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mapbuilder/mapbuilder-lib-1.5-alpha1.zip ZIP]
| [http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mapbuilder/mapbuilder-lib-1.5-alpha1.zip ZIP]
| [http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mapbuilder/mapbuilder-lib-1.5-alpha1-war.zip WAR]
|
|-
| [http://mapguide.osgeo.org MapGuide] ([http://mapguide.osgeo.org/downloads.html Download])
| 1.1.0
| [http://download.osgeo.org/mapguide/releases/1.1.0/mapguide-1.1.0.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://www.geolinux.com.br/packages/geolinux/Mandriva/2007.1/i586/ RPMs]
|
| [http://download.osgeo.org/mapguide/releases/1.1.0/MgServerSetup-1.1.0.exe EXE]
|
|
|-
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu MapServer] ([http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/download/current/ Download])
| 4.10.2
| [http://download.osgeo.org/mapserver/mapserver-4.10.2.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://mappinghacks.com/rpm/fedora/4/ RPMs] [http://maptools.org/fgs FGS]
| [http://www.kyngchaos.com/files/software/unixport/mapserver_static4102-1.dmg DMG]
| [http://maptools.org/ms4w/ MS4W]
|
| [http://maptools.org/fgs FGS] [http://maptools.org/ms4w/ MS4W] [http://fwtools.maptools.org/ FWTools]
|-
| [http://www.openlayers.org OpenLayers] ([http://openlayers.org/download/ Download])
| 2.4
| [http://openlayers.org/download/OpenLayers-2.4.tar.gz TAR.GZ] [http://openlayers.org/api/OpenLayers.js Live JS]
| [http://openlayers.org/download/OpenLayers-2.4.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://openlayers.org/download/OpenLayers-2.4.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://openlayers.org/download/OpenLayers-2.4.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
|
|
|-
| [http://grass.itc.it/ GRASS GIS] ([http://grass.itc.it/download/index.php Download])
| 6.2.2
| [http://grass.itc.it/grass62/source/grass-6.2.2RC1.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://grass.itc.it/download/index.php Various]
| [http://grass.itc.it/grass62/binary/macosx/ Various]
| [http://grass.itc.it/grass62/binary/mswindows/ Various]
| [http://www.jgrass.org JGrass/uDig]
| [http://www.qgis.org Quantum GIS]
|-
| [http://fdo.osgeo.org/ FDO] ([http://fdo.osgeo.org/downloads.html Download])
| 3.2.1
| [http://download.osgeo.org/fdo/3.2.1/fdo-3.2.1.tar.gz Main TAR.GZ]
|
|
| [http://download.osgeo.org/fdo/3.2.1/fdo-3.2.1-windows_bin_release.zip Main ZIP]
|
|
|-
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL] ([http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadingGdalBinaries Download])
| 1.4.1
| [http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/gdal-1.4.1.tar.gz TAR.GZ]
| [http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/download.pl?arch=i386&file=pool%2Fmain%2Fg%2Fgdal%2Fgdal-bin_1.4.1-6_i386.deb&md5sum=d4c67d1b920a1666038a39e1a0e58fe2&arch=i386&type=main DEB] [http://www.gdf-hannover.de/media.php?id=1&lg=en RPMs]
| [http://www.kyngchaos.com/files/software/unixport/GDAL_Framework-141-2a.dmg DMG]
| [http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/win32/gdalwin32exe141.zip ZIP]
|
| [http://maptools.org/fgs FGS] [http://maptools.org/ms4w/ MS4W] [http://fwtools.maptools.org/ FWTools]
|-
| [http://geotools.codehaus.org/ GeoTools] ([http://geotools.codehaus.org/ Downloads])
| 2.3.1
| [http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geotools/gt2-2.3.1a-src.zip ZIP]
| [http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geotools/gt2-2.3.1-bin.zip ZIP]
| [http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geotools/gt2-2.3.1-bin.zip ZIP]
| [http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geotools/gt2-2.3.1-bin.zip ZIP]
| [http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geotools/gt2-2.3.1-bin.zip ZIP]
|
|-
| [http://geonetwork-opensource.org GeoNetwork] ([http://geonetwork-opensource.org/software Download])
| 2.0.3
| [https://geonetwork.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/geonetwork SVN]
| [http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geonetwork/geonetwork-intermap-2.0.3-install.jar JAR]
| [http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geonetwork/geonetwork-intermap-2.0.3-install.jar JAR]
| [http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geonetwork/geonetwork-intermap-2.0.3-install.jar JAR]
| [http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/geonetwork/geonetwork-intermap-2.0.3-install.jar JAR]
|
|}

=Building A Binary Stack=
The development of a primary [[OSGeo Binary Distribution]] was proposed earlier. There are several possible approaches to meeting this need. This section discusses a few different approaches.

==Full Multiplatform Binary stack==
This is a dream for a good binary stack. A platform to compile all source codes that can be used for all OS.

=== Starkits ===
A good example is [http://www.equi4.com/starkit/ Starkit]. A Starkit is a wrapping mechanism named after "STandAlone Runtime Kit" for delivering an application in a self-contained, installation-free, and portable way.
* [http://tools.devchannel.org/devtoolschannel/04/02/25/216202.shtml?tid=46 Using Starkits for application deployment] - good intro article

===pro===
*self-contained, installation-free, and portable way
*???

===cons===
* all libraries in one installer. Static compilation.
* the most expensive (time, money, know how) to maintain.

==MS4W==
The [http://www.maptools.org/ms4w/ no fuss installer] for setting up MapServer on Microsoft Windows platforms. The purpose of this package is to allow all levels of MapServer users to quickly install a working environment for MapServer development on Windows. It is also an environment for packaging and distributing MapServer applications
===pro===
*???
*???
===cons===
*only windows oriented
*???

==FGS==

The [http://www.maptools.org/fgs/ FGS Linux Installer] is a self-extracting file that will install MapServer with PHP/MapScript and all of their dependencies on your Linux system. It provides a stand-alone environment with all the required software (incl. Apache and PHP) to run PHP/MapScript webmapping applications. The bundled version of Apache can be configured to run on any port so it will not interfere with previous installations of Apache or other web servers on your system.

===pro===
*???
*???
===cons===
* only linux oriented
*???

==Linux packages repositories==
Package repositories are normaly maintained by specialist who prepare packages for personal use and for the community.
GIS packages are normally not available in official distributions that's why there's the need for an external repository.

Currently the only external repository is '''Jachym Cepicky''''s one: http://les-ejk.cz/ubuntu/ for the Ubuntu distribution. The DebianGIS project has decided to focus on packages in the main distribution, which is probably a better approach on the long-term.

*[http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis '''Debian GIS''' Project page]
* [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS Ubuntu GIS page]: please note that there is no UbuntuGIS project. This wiki page is just to collect all available information for users and developers. The page is currently out of date.

===pro===
* package maintainance is centralized
* fast install in specific Linux distributions
* posibility to create a cental OSGeo repository
===cons===
* too many linux distributions to maintain all packages for all of them
* ???

==LiveCD==
Based on Linux, LiveCDs are a complete operating system contained is a single CD. There's no need to install it on the local machine, only a boot from CD drive is needed to experience the configured LiveCD.

Google search page for [http://www.google.com/search?q=gis+livecd GIS LiveCD].

===pro===
* optimized configuration of all application inside a single environment.
* no risk of library collisions as when installing multiple sofwares on the same machine.
* less expensive to maintain: a good linux hacker with some experience of liveCD can maintain different versions without a big effort.
* useful for presentations, workshops, demos, and university classroom. No need to configure many computers.

===cons===
* based only on one OS (Linux).
* Need to download an entire ISO (700 MB ca.)
*???

User:Steko

2007-02-05T16:38:41Z

Wiki-Steko:

for more information: http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Utente:Steko

Italiano

2006-12-23T18:04:56Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Comunità GFOSS italiana */

[[Local_Chapters|<< Back to the Local Chapters page]]

== Comunità GFOSS italiana ==
E' attualmente in corso un tentativo di proporre agli utenti di lingua italiana la creazione di un Local Chapter di Osgeo.
La discussione è sulla mailing list di GFOSS.it :
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/listinfo/gfoss/

Si invitano le persone interessate ad aggiungersi alla lista alla voce [[#Gli interessati]].

== Links==
''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

==Gli interessati==
* Paolo Cavallini
* Lorenzo Becchi
* Stefano Costa
* Maria Antonia Brovelli
* Francesco P. Lovergine
* Ivan Marchesini
* Giovanni Allegri

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''OK'''
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''READY''' (lang:it)
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - '''TODO'''
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

[[Category:Local Chapters]]

Italiano

2006-12-23T15:20:47Z

Wiki-Steko: Gli interessati : Stefano Costa

[[Local_Chapters|<< Back to the Local Chapters page]]

== Comunità GFOSS italiana ==
E' attualmente in corso un tentativo di proporre agli utenti di lingua italiana la creazione di un Local Chapter di Osgeo.
La discussione è sulla mailing list di GFOSS.it :
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/

Si invita le persone interessate ad aggiungersi alla lista alla voce [[#Gli interessati]].

== Links==
''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

==Gli interessati==
* Paolo Cavallini
* Lorenzo Becchi
* Stefano Costa

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''OK'''
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''READY''' (lang:it)
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - '''TODO'''
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

[[Category:Local Chapters]]

OSGeo Binary Distribution

2006-10-23T20:35:56Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Technical Notes */

This is a proposal for a project to develop an OSGeo "branded and certified" binary distribution of open source geospatial software for Windows, Linux and possibly MacOS X and Solaris.

= Rationale =

= Objectives =

Offer a painless user experience installing and getting started with OSGeo products.

* Support major operating systems. In order of precidence that likely means Windows, Linux (Intel32), MacOS X and Solaris (Sparc).
* Ensure that all components are inter-compatible avoiding version incompatibility hell.
* Allow progressive installation, with packages pulled over the internet as requested. So the person can install a few packages without having to download everything, and so they can go back and add more packages later.
* Provide an easy to use GUI installer.
* Be relatively distribution/version agnostic - on linux we hope the same binaries will work on Debian, Fedora Core, Suse, Ubuntu, etc. On windows and MacOS X we hope the binaries would work across a variety of relatively recent OS versions.
* Include at least all the OSGeo project software as packages, and dependencies of those packages.
* Suitable for desktop and web service folks.

= Who =

= Funding =

* [[Budget 2006-2007]]
* [[EDRC BAA Proposal]]
* Make this a proper "project" of the foundation so folks can earmark specific sponsorship support to it.

= Technical Notes =

* I think building on the existing FGS infrastructure Linux (and possibly other Unix platforms) is attractive.
* I think the existing MS4W package could potentially be a base for windows distribution.
* William Kyngesburye has done a great deal of work producing MacOS X framework-style packages of GDAL, MapServer, GRASS etc for MacOS X ( http://www.kyngchaos.com/ ).
* GDF Hannover has build RPMs for various Linux distros: http://www.gdf-hannover.de/software This could be a starting point
* Stephan Holl/GDF has written a GUI installer for QGIS0.8 with winGRASS-native integrated (MS-Windows).
* [http://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl DebianGIS] is about improving Debian to make it the best distribution for Geographical Information Systems applications and users. A good deal of GIS related softwares and libraries (e.g. GRASS) are already present in Debian. We have currently an up-to-date GRASS package in main and many other packages.
* [https://wiki.ubuntu.com//UbuntuGIS UbuntuGIS] is a wiki page that collects informations about all the GIS packages users find in a standard Ubuntu installation

Talk:OSGeo Binary Distribution

2006-10-23T20:28:40Z

Wiki-Steko:

As a Debian and Ubuntu user of GRASS, I'd like to give here my 2¢ about binaries.
# People don't like external repositories
# People don't like non-debianized binaries (that's why they are using Debian)
# People like Debian because of its stability: a sysadmin won't accept to install external packages in a production environment
So IMVHO, targeting to these 2 distros, OSGEO should come and help DebianGIS, who is responsible for Debian packages, and have someone in the Ubuntu MOTU (Masters of the Universe : those who manage packages that come straight from debian unstable without being modified by the Ubuntu staff) who takes care about keeping current versions in the repositories.

1 single binary for all Linux distros is not good IMHO, for the reasons above.--[[User:Steko|Steko]] 22:28, 23 October 2006 (CEST)

Talk:OSGeo Binary Distribution

2006-10-23T20:28:09Z

Wiki-Steko:

Archaeology

2006-09-19T10:59:39Z

Wiki-Steko:

A special interest group for archaeology would help develop both archaeology's use of open source GIS and develop archaeology's use of GIS. The latter would be helped by using open source tools that could be adapted to deal with the special requirements of archaeology GIS, in stark contrast to the proprietary tools commonly used.

===Interesting links===
* http://www.iosa.it
** http://list.iosa.it International Mailing List
* http://www.arc-team.com
* http://www.archeogr.unisi.it/asiaa

'''Sign up here!'''
* [[user:chrisputtick]]
* [[User:Steko|Steko]]

Archaeology

2006-09-19T10:57:39Z

Wiki-Steko:

A special interest group for archaeology would help develop both archaeology's use of open source GIS and develop archaeology's use of GIS. The latter would be helped by using open source tools that could be adapted to deal with the special requirements of archaeology GIS, in stark contrast to the proprietary tools commonly used.

Sign up here!

[[user:chrisputtick]]
--[[User:Steko|Steko]] 12:57, 19 September 2006 (CEST)

Italiano

2006-08-08T20:30:19Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Guidelines */

== Links: Comunità GFOSS italiana ==

''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''MAYBE''' ( QGIS and GRASS Manuals translations)
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - '''TODO'''
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

Italiano

2006-08-08T20:29:31Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Guidelines */

== Links: Comunità GFOSS italiana ==

''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''MAYBE''' ( QGIS and GRASS Manuals translations)
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - '''TODO'''
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

Italiano

2006-08-08T20:26:27Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Guidelines */

== Links: Comunità GFOSS italiana ==

''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities - '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization - '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences - '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs - '''OK''' ( GFOSS live CD)
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages - '''MAYBE''' ( QGIS and GRASS Manuals translations)
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter. - '''READY'''
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance). - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo. - '''TODO'''
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information. - '''TODO'''
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer. - '''TODO'''

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? - '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation? - '''YES'''
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country) - '''YES'''

Italiano

2006-08-08T10:25:27Z

Wiki-Steko: /* Chapter Roles */

== Links: Comunità GFOSS italiana ==

''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities '''OK'''
* Software Internationalization and Localization '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter.
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance).
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo.
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information.
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer.

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation?
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country)

Italiano

2006-08-08T10:24:26Z

Wiki-Steko:

== Links: Comunità GFOSS italiana ==

''(siti in italiano)''

* Il portale: http://www.gfoss.it
* Il Wiki: http://wiki.gfoss.it
* La mailing list: http://www.faunalia.com/pipermail/gfoss/
* Il canale IRC: #gfoss su irc.freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/#gfoss
* [http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/PagineJabber Qui] gli indirizzi Jabber della comunità GFOSS italiana.

== Guidelines ==
=== Chapter Roles ===

* Provide member networking opportunities for support and job opportunities
* Software Internationalization and Localization '''OK'''
* Development of prototype applications to demonstrate Open Source geospatial capabilities to local and regional audiences '''OK'''
* Software Packaging and Customization for local and regional needs
* Training, Support and Development of e-Learning Contents in local languages
* Support Open standards and Open access to geospatial data in region '''OK'''
* Promoting OSGeo and enhancing visibility in various forums

=== Chapter Responsibilities ===

* “OSGeo Chapter” officially represents OSGeo and is formally recognized as OSGeo Project.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must support the OSGeo Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must hold regular meetings (at least annual) and provide annual report of activities to chapter membership and OSGeo Board. '''OK'''
* “OSGeo Chapter” will not entail any financial commitment from or on-behalf of OSGeo. OSGeo will also not provide any budget assistance to the “OSGeo Chapter”.
* “OSGeo Chapter” is encouraged develop and maintain “Directory Listing” of companies, people, universities and organizations involved with or using OSGeo projects.
* “OSGeo Chapter” must strive at networking with organizations to enlist participation and support for OSGeo.
* OSGeo reserves the right to terminate its relation with an “OSGeo Chapter” if OSGeo has reasons to believe that the activities of the “OSGeo Chapter” are contrary or detrimental to the Mission and Objectives of OSGeo.

===Chapter Formation ===

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:
# "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter.
# "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance).
# “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo.
# “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information.
# The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer.

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:
* Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation? '''NO'''
* Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation?
* Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country)