From warmerdam at pobox.com Fri Oct 5 17:59:45 2007 From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:59:45 -0400 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Mapbender 2.4.1 Released Message-ID: <4706DE01.8020401@pobox.com> The Mapbender Project is happy to announce the new release 2.4.3 with some minor changes and all bug fixes since the last version. Change in Release Management More importantly this is the first release that comes in a regular time cycle and not after a certain set of features have been added. This change in policy has been discussed at length on the Mapbender mailing list and on IRC. It reflects a further maturation of the software and aims at making regular updates to the newest version a lesser issue for users and portal operators. The next release with major changes is due in December 2007, the challenge being whether the Project will keep up with the goal of regular release cycles. Full Adoption of Trac After more than a half year of testing, discussion and trial phase all enhancements and bug fixes are now managed via the OSGeo operated Trac instance. Trac is now also used to manage road map and further development. http://trac.osgeo.org/mapbender/report/1 Keep it Human(e and) Readable The human readable version continues to be available through the Wiki as a MediaWiki template page that ties into the full Version History of Mapbender. http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Template:Changelog_2.4.3 Online Training Course In time for FOSS4G 2007 a full fledged Online Training Course (Mapbender 101) is made available through OSGeo's Education infrastructure Moodle (currently still on the OSGeo Test Server). It received its baptism of fire during the FOSS4G Mapbender Workshop. http://www.foss4g2007.org/workshops/W-03/ http://test.osgeo.net/moodle/ From warmerdam at pobox.com Fri Oct 5 18:13:01 2007 From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:13:01 -0400 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Steve Lime Wins Sol Katz GFOSS Award Message-ID: <4706E11D.8010303@pobox.com> During the closing plenary of the FOSS4G2007 conference, Steve Lime was honored with the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) for 2007. Steve is the founder of the MapServer project, and has dedicated countless hours to the MapServer community over the past decade. Always very approachable and able to assist even the newest users on mailing lists, Steve's MapServer project has blossomed into one of the most popular and stable GFOSS projects today. Background ---------- The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come. Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities. In the early 80's, Sol assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System). This software was arguably the first open source GIS software in the world. Sol would later go on to release and maintain PC MOSS. He was also one of the first involved in public data translator utilities. Utilities that he developed for converting DEMs and reading SDTS files were contributed back to the geospatial community, and are still available today. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM is still available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/. Sadly, after fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for almost a decade, Sol died April 23, 1999 in bed. His legacy will always live on in the GFOSS world. From warmerdam at pobox.com Mon Oct 29 23:03:04 2007 From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:03:04 -0400 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Request for Proposal for Hosting 2009 Conference Message-ID: <4726C918.4000702@pobox.com> The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, today released a request for proposal, or RFP, (available at http://www.osgeo.org/sites/osgeo.org/files/webfiles/conference/rfp/2009/osgeo-conference-2009-request-for-proposal.pdf) for the hosting of the FOSS4G 2009 conference. With the overwhelming success of the recent FOSS4G 2007 conference in Victoria Canada (http://www.foss4g2007.org/), and as excitement begins to build for FOSS4G 2008 in Cape Town South Africa (http://www.foss4g2008.org/), OSGeo again aims for the 2009 conference to be a major geospatial conference during that year. The RFP solicitation closes January 11th, 2008. -- OSGeo Conference Committee