Category Archives: OSGeo

Topics related to the Open Source Geospatial foundation (http://www.osgeo.org/)

FOSS4G 2007: Too much goodness!

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Over 200 proposals were made for presentations at FOSS4G 2007. Narrowing these down to the required 120 would be an impossible task for one committee, so we’ve taken the community-based approach of allowing you to choose your favourites.

I completed my selection this morning, after visiting the website and getting an email telling me how to rate the proposals. It said “try to restrict yourself
to between 25 and 40 expressions of interest if you can”. I thought… no problem, I’ve never been to a conference where there’s that many interesting sessions. Wrong. In the end I (barely) made it into this window, but it took me over an hour of careful reading and weighing to decide which sessions I was most interested in.

The breadth of choice for FOSS4G 2007 attendees is going to be amazing, regardless of which proposals make the final cut. When you combine the unique opportunity of hands-on workshops (filling up fast), in-conference labs, and the amazing slate of presentations, the value is incredible. Especially if you register now to take advantage of the early-bird rate.

-J

Student Coder? Love Maps? Need Cash? Click Here!

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For a limited time only, students who submit a great proposal to OSGeo for Google’s Summer of Code have the chance to:

  • work on awesome open source geospatial software. Location is the new Web 2.0, and open source is where it’s at.
  • earn the adoration and respect of their peers (Ohh, look at Jenny… she’s an UberCoder)
  • interact with and study sought-after geogeeks in their natural habitat
  • make a bit of money ($4500 USD – certain restrictions apply)

This offer won’t last long. If you or someone you love might be interested, please call now:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/2007_SoC_Merged_Ideas

Seriously, if you’re interested, now is a good time to act. We haven’t received very many applications yet, and they need to be in by the 26th (the deadline was extended). More information on the summer of code can be found here:

http://code.google.com/soc/

And the student application guide is here:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-announce/web/guide-to-the-gsoc-web-app-for-student-applicants

-J

pyFDO is in the House – Yeah Baby!

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You heard me, the Feature Data Objects (FDO) team just committed initial Python support.

I’m not much of a Python hacker, but I have great respect for it. Python has strong support in the open source geospatial world (Hobu and Sean have a lot to say about it), and it is also used by proprietary software such as Safe Software‘s FME (pyFME) and ESRI ArcGIS (Hobu’s guide).

Blemishes first: this first code dump is Windows-only (Linux support is promised), and documentation is not yet available. However, the unit tests that were committed should provide an idea of how it works. I found the ApplySchemaTest to be the most instructive. I really encourage Python hackers to start looking at this. As we have found with MapGuide and Java, it can be hard to get everything exactly right with a wrapper, so I’m sure that constructive comments on the FDO users mailing list would be appreciated.

For anyone not familiar with FDO, it is a geospatial data abstraction toolkit, kind of like ODBC on steroids for vector and raster geodata. Earlier this month, following MapGuide’s graduation, FDO was accepted into OSGeo’s incubation process. The project is now taking steps towards a truly open development process, having formed its independent project steering committee (there are a couple slots available; get involved now!) and just posted its first RFC.

FDO has existing providers for many formats (such as SHP, SDF, WMS, WFS, ArcSDE, Oracle, and a whole range of raster formats), and leverages the OGR open source library to provide access to many other formats indirectly. Depending on the capabilities implemented by a specific provider, FDO can support complex geometry (three dimensions, circular arcs, geometry collections, etc), common SQL expressions, all of the standard geospatial predicates (disjoint, crosses, intersects inside, etc), locking, long transactions, and other “tough” features often associated with spatial data.

Since its initial release last year, FDO has garnered a lot of interest, with providers being developed independently by SL-King (Oracle), Refractions Research / Mateusz Loskot (PostGIS), and Safe Software (FME ; all supported formats).

I believe that with dedicated effort being applied to opening the development process around FDO, we will see a lot of good things from this project in the near future.

-J

FOSS4G 2007 Sponsorship and Workshop Opportunities

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When Paul Ramsey asked me to join the local organising committee for FOSS4G 2007, I jumped at the opportunity. This is going to be another in a series of great conferences, and you couldn’t ask for a better location than beautiful Victoria, British Columbia.

Paul’s recent post highlights some of the progress we have been making, and I would like to point out two great opportunities for businesses and individuals wanting to become involved in this year’s conference.

First, we have been fortunate to attract some great sponsors such as Autodesk, Google and Safe Software (see Paul’s article for a complete list) but there are still some sponsorship positions (pdf) available. Apart from the tangible benefits listed, there are many reasons why you should sponsor FOSS4G. Here are two:

  • Supporting open source geospatial makes good business sense. Ensuring the continued development of high quality software allows you to focus your internal resources on the core competencies that differentiate you from your competition.
  • This conference has a rich history of fostering innovation in geospatial development. By participating, you will have a chance to influence this process and be in a position to take advantage of these changes in your business.

Second, the Call for Workshops has just gone out. The great hands-on workshops are a large part of what makes FOSS4G so successful. This year, the first day of the conference is dedicated to half-day workshops, and shorter 90-minute workshops will be offered throughout the conference.

If you have a topic that you would like to share with the community, we would love to hear from you. Please fill out a proposal and send it in. Presenters of half-day workshops will receive a full conference registration, and ninety-minute workshops will give you a fifty percent discount.

-J

Insight, foresight, more sight

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Hobu just posted an insightful article on what makes open source projects healthy, with a good amount of introspection around several large open geospatial projects and the open source geospatial community. Since he doesn’t allow comments, I’ll just have to write another article… :)

Howard’s analysis of how OSGeo can be the catalyst that pushes member projects to new levels of function is spot-on. I really hope that we (all of us) can work to ensure that his challenge is upheld. This will require considerable levels of community involvement. I know that there is a lot of cool stuff to do, but many OSGeo committees are really struggling with the size of the task at hand and could really use more help.

Speaking of cool stuff… the MapGuide Open Source PSC had our first meeting today. Most of it dealt with the kind of critical process definition work that needs to be done in a healthy open source project. Reflecting back on that meeting — apart from realizing how much of a disruptive effect I have on meetings, sorry all — I can see how hard it is going to be for the Autodesk folks on the committee to adjust to open source, but I can also see how hard they are trying. It will be difficult for us to meet all of Howard’s criteria for a health project, especially since there’s only one person on the committee that has extensive open source development experience, but we’re going to give it our best shot.

This brings up another point. I’d like to say that it’s great to have our open source angel in the background, guiding us towards health. Thanks Daniel M. His presense as a mentor is a huge benefit to the MapGuide project that would not have been realized without OSGeo and the incubation process. I remember initially that quite a few folks (myself included) didn’t feel that MapGuide and some of the other initial projects should have to incubate. I am now extremely glad that OSGeo has forced this; it really helps projects move towards the goals that Hobu has clarified.

-J