[Board] [geoforall-ab] IMPORTANT - feedback and vote will be needed: geo4all relationship

[Suchith Anand]

Thanks Jody .I also strongly believe that OSGeo and FOSS4G represents Openness and welcome to everyone who follows the ideals.


We have been trying to welcome all initiatives who follow open principles in geoeducation (free and open source software, open data, open standards, open educational resources)  and that was why we decided to support NASA WorldWind Europa Challenge at FOSS4G Europe . We are very grateful for Maria and Patrick for all the efforts they put in to make this possible. It will be disappointing if in the  next edition of NASA World Wind Europa Challenge is not with us (i really hope Patrick and colleagues will consider having the Europa challenge at future FOSS4Gs) . I really hope we can be more welcoming.


We have been working hard to get colleagues in the MapStory Foundation   to work with our education efforts and that was exactly why we decided to invite them to do a student challenge [1] for FOSS4G Bonn Though not officially an OSGeo project, MapStory   is an openly licensed data commons,an Open Educational Resource, that is OGC compliant, built on open source geo http://www.GeoNode.org.<http://www.geonode.org./> It is intended explicitly for students to be able to organise and share what they know about the world spatially and temporally.This is exactly the kind of spatial learning platform we need for expanding geoeducation for schools.

Just because it is not an OSGeo project does not mean it should be not be used. The main principle we need to look into is Openness in GeoEducation .


In my humble opinion,we should support and make use of MapStory.org , as an alternative to proprietary ones like ArcGISOnline, so that students and teachers can make use of this for learning purposes[2] without being dependent on the mercy of any  proprietary vendors.


Best wishes,

Suchith


[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-September/002207.html

[2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-July/001850.html


________________________________
From: Jody Garnett [jody.garnett at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 7:32 PM
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: geoforall-ab at lists.osgeo.org; OSGeo Board
Subject: Re: [Board] [geoforall-ab] IMPORTANT - feedback and vote will be needed: geo4all relationship

On 26 November 2015 at 04:58, Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear All,

GeoforAll was officially created through various MoUs by OSGeo. OSGeo is the parent organisation for Geo4All  as only OSGeo  can make any MoUs with external organisations for Geo4All (ICA, ISPRS and more MoUs with UCGIS etc are in various stages).


If OSGeo Board wants , GeoforAll  can explicitly add in the criteria that OSGeo software is the primary focus (it is already implicit that any university establishing Open Source Geospatial Labs is using OSGeo software anyway and promoting open data, open standards, open educational resources etc.) BUT we should not exclude any  Free and open source used for education and should welcome all who are following Open principles in GeoEducation. In OSGeo Education we have been using other free and open source software  (R etc) and including course materials etc for long time.

Can I repeat, this is about promoting open source use and participation  - there has never been any request to restrict promotion to a specific list of projects. I do not want this assumption made even implicitly :)

The wiki page used R as an example specifically to address this misunderstanding - is there any way we can be more clear.

Can I ask where you got this impression from? It is very troubling to me as it misrepresents what OSGeo is for.
--
Jody




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