'''''Press release'''''

== Open Source Geospatial Foundation Created to Strengthen Collaborative Development of Open Geospatial Technologies ==

'''OSGEO to provide an umbrella for community-led GIS and mapping projects'''

The open source geospatial community today announced the formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO), a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data.  The foundation was formed to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community.  It will also serve as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit.  

In early February OSGEO held an organizational meeting in Chicago, where the foundation’s structure and vision were defined.  The Chicago meeting also resulted in the appointment of an initial board of directors which will be responsible for the drafting and execution of the foundation's charter and bylaws.  The initial five directors come from North America and Europe and represent various communities along with different technology (C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Javascript, etc.).  The initial five directors of OSGEO are:

* Arnulf Christl - Mapbender, CCGIS, Germany;
* Chris Holmes - GeoServer/ GeoTools, The Open Planning Project, U.S.;
* Gary Lang – MapGuide Open Source, Autodesk, U.S.;
* Markus Neteler - GRASS, Istituto Trentino Di Cultura, Italy;
* Frank Warmerdam - GDAL/OGR, Canada.

The foundation expects to appoint four additional directors within the next several weeks to serve as the full interim board until the next annual meeting of the foundation membership.

OSGEO draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the Apache Foundation, including a membership composed of individuals drawn from foundation projects who are selected for membership status based on their active contribution to foundation projects and governance. The initial membership consists of the five initial board members plus 16 other participants who attended the Chicago organizational meeting.  The foundation is seeking over the next several weeks to add an additional 24 members from the broarder open source geospatial community through a public nomination process. From the list of nominations, 24 additional members will be elected by the current members.

The foundation will not require that OSGEO software projects be licensed under any one particular open source license.  However, in furtherance of its general philosophy of promoting open source software, the foundation will require that all OSGEO software be released under an open source license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). . The long term goal is to encourage licenses that allow the different foundation projects to work better together and permit for code exchange among them.  The foundation will implement contribution and intellectual property policies designed to avoid the inclusion of proprietary or patented code in OSGEO projects.  Foundation projects are focused on interoperability – both with one another at the library level, and with other proprietary and open source projects through the use of open standards.  

While an initial set of projects was proposed as founding projects, several projects such as MapServer and GeoTools are currently seeking for a decision within their communities weather to join. Initial OSGEO projects will be Mapbender, MapBuilder, MapGuide Open Source, GDAL/OGR, GRASS, and OSSIM.  

The foundation will also be pursuing goals beyond software development, such as promoting more open access to government produced spatial data.  Access under reasonable conditions to geospatial data is a major problem outside of North America.

Thanks to the use of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) during the meeting, discussions were open to peers outside of the meeting room. The consensus reached at the Chicago meeting paves the way to establish a powerful, inclusive foundation.