[OSGeo-Announce] IGN France Becomes OSGeo Sponsor

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

IGN France has become the latest OSGeo Associate Sponsor! The  
Institut Géographique National (IGN) is an administrative public  
institution under the authority of France’s Ministry of Ecology and  
Sustainable Development. They have a decades-long expertise  
especially in cartography, aerial imagery and geographic databases.

Their interest in open source comes first from improving tools such  
as Proj.4 and OSGeo-supported GDAL/OGR, in order to be able to  
reproject geographic data from the old French geodesic system (NTF)  
to the new one (RGF93). Hopefully these improved tools will help make  
the transition easier for the public.

Second, they have also been using OSGeo-supported OpenLayers as a  
foundation for Geoportail's new API. Given OpenLayers's widespread  
use, programmers should find it easy to use Geoportail's API.
IGN France looks forward to being involved in supporting OSGeo  
through the funding but also by continuing contributing code to the  
aforementioned projects.

You can learn more about IGN France at: http://www.ign.fr/