[OSGeo-Announce] TorchGeo 0.8.0 Release

[Jorge Sanz]

https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/torchgeo-0-8-0-release/

Full release notes at https://github.com/torchgeo/torchgeo/releases/tag/v0.8.0

TorchGeo is a PyTorch domain library, similar to torchvision, providing
datasets, samplers, transforms, and pre-trained models specific to
geospatial data.

TorchGeo 0.8 includes 28 new pre-trained model weights and a number of
improvements required for better time series support, including a
complete rewrite of all GeoDataset and GeoSampler internals,
encompassing 8 months of hard work by 23 contributors from around the world.

Highlights of this release

Open and independent governance

You may have noticed that https://github.com/microsoft/torchgeo is now
https://github.com/torchgeo/torchgeo. This is not an accident!

Note - TorchGeo now belongs to YOU, please join our monthly Technical
Steering Committee meetings!

TorchGeo was initially created as an intern project at Microsoft's AI
for Good Lab back in 2021. Once we made it open source, we were blown
away by how quickly it was adopted by the AI4EO community! Since then,
over 100 people from around the world have contributed to making
TorchGeo what it is today.

Despite being open source, we have received feedback from many current
and potential contributors that they have found it difficult to
contribute to TorchGeo due to its ownership by Microsoft. While
Microsoft has been an excellent incubator for TorchGeo over the past
four years, we believe TorchGeo has outgrown its incubation phase.

Over the past year, we have been working diligently with Microsoft to
come up with a solution. As of this release, we are excited to announce
the formation of the TorchGeo /Organization/, a governing body designed
to ensure the independence and longevity of the TorchGeo /Project/. The
TorchGeo Organization is led by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC),
initially composed of the current maintainers of the TorchGeo Project:

* @adamjstewart <https://github.com/adamjstewart> (TUM) - Chair
* @calebrob6 <https://github.com/calebrob6> (Microsoft)
* @anthonymlortiz <https://github.com/anthonymlortiz> (Microsoft)
* @isaaccorley <https://github.com/isaaccorley> (Wherobots)
* @ashnair1 <https://github.com/ashnair1> (Space42)
* @nilsleh <https://github.com/nilsleh> (TUM)

TorchGeo now lives at https://github.com/torchgeo, and Microsoft has
graciously volunteered to give away the copyright to YOU, the TorchGeo
/Contributors/. We would like all TorchGeo users and developers to take
ownership of the project, and thus invite each and every one of you to
join our TSC meetings. Please join the |#technical-steering-committee|
channel in the TorchGeo Slack
<https://join.slack.com/t/torchgeo/shared_invite/zt-22rse667m-eqtCeNW0yI000Tl4B~2PIw>
for more information on our monthly meeting schedule.

Other than this new open and independent governance, not much will
change with the TorchGeo Project. TorchGeo will always remain open
source under an MIT license and be free for all users and developers. We
hope this change will open up opportunities for more collaboration, more
awesome libraries built on top of TorchGeo, and more confidence in the
long-term future of the project!