RES: [OSGeo-Discuss] A report on my recent trip to Brazil

[Rafael Medeiros Sperb]

Dear Listners

Regarding Mr. Kishor report, it should be noticed that, in the past, INPE has taken a path apart from the international efforts towards open standards. Only recently it shifted, what will be, in my point of view, beneficial to potential users not only in Brazil, but all other countries. So, I am anxious to see INPE as one of the OSGeo members...

Meanwhile, I would like to bring attention to two important efforts in Brazil. First one is the Public Software Portal from the Brazilian Federal Government (http://www.softwarepublico.gov.br/spb/) which aims at providing open source software for governments under public license. It also seeks to establish users' communities so as development efforts might be orchestrated. The second one is the development of I3GEO, a very comprehensive MapServer application that has several features and functionalities implemented in Portuguese (http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo). This application has been developed by the IT team of the Brazilian Environmental Ministry under Edmar Moretti's leadership. At this moment it is distributed as GPL, but sooner (I hope!!!) it will be in the public software list of the Brazilian Federal Government. It is worth to check it, and I would seriously consider to incubate such effort under OSGeo.

Cheers,

Rafael Medeiros Sperb
G10

 


-----Mensagem original-----
De: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] Em nome de P Kishor
Enviada em: segunda-feira, 21 de maio de 2007 13:03
Para: Chris Holmes
Cc: OSGeo Discussions; Lúbia Vinhas; OSGeo-edu
Assunto: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] A report on my recent trip to Brazil

Chris,

Please see my response below --

On 5/21/07, Chris Holmes <cholmes at openplans.org> wrote:
>
> > 4. After 5 days of meetings, I visited Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas
> > Espacias (INPE) <http://www.inpe.br/ingles/index.php/>, the premier
> > Brazilian National Institute for Space Research at the invitation of
> > its Image Processing Division (DPI) in nearyby São José dos Campos.
> > Researchers from DPI are also developing a project called TerraLib
> > <http://www.terralib.org/>, an open source set of GIS classes and
> > functions library written in C++. Of particular interest is a program
> > called TerraView <http://www.dpi.inpe.br/terraview/index.php> based on
> > TerraLib. Also open source (GPL), TerraView can be described as a more
> > scientifically and analytically oriented ArcView. I promptly
> > downloaded TerraView, and within minutes, with a little help from the
> > TerraView Development Manager, I had it running under Parallels/WinXP
> > on my MacBook Pro, and had imported Shapefiles into its own data
> > format. A very quick program, TerraView not only works with PostGres,
> > MySQL, and Oracle, it natively manages geographic data in a relational
> > format using ADO. TerraLib/TerraView are successors to INPE's earlier
> > free, but not open source, project called SPRING
> > <http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/index.html>. Because of
> > historical reasons, SPRING is not open source, but is available to
> > anyone and can be used on Windows or Linux. TerraLib/TerraView are
> > currently under more active development, and are available as true
> > open source programs. At my suggestion, INPE will be looking into
> > joining OSGeo. The INPE researchers are doing amazing work, and the
> > spirit of free access to data and software seemed to permeate everyone
> > I met. Having active involvement and backing of an institute of INPE's
> > prestige and caliber will be very beneficial to the open geospatial
> > community.
>
> I heard about this project when Iwas in Brazil, and was really impressed
> by the amount of effort going in to it.  I think at the time the
> government was employing something like over 40 people working on it.
> Not sure if that's still the case, but there's obviously a lot of
> effort.  But it's frustrating because it's all parallel to the rest of
> our efforts.  It'd be great to get them to be a part of OSGeo, but
> _really_ great if we get their work inter-operating with what we are
> doing and hopefully contributing to common software packages, and indeed
> having their stuff implement OGC standards.  If you have contacts I'd be
> more than happy to help talk to them further.

As I mentioned in my email above, INPE will be looking into getting
more actively involved with OSGeo. I am cc-ing this email to my friend
Lúbia Vinhas, the Development Manager of the TerraLib project. Lúbia
was kind enough to invite me to INPE and host me while I was there.
INPE might even be interested in submitting the TerraLib/TerraView
project to be included under the OSGeo Foundation umbrella, but being
a large, governmental institution, I am sure they will have to work
within their own mandated boundaries.

These are absolutely stellar folks, and any support from them will be
only good for us. I hope to continue the conversation with Lúbia, and
hopefully we can see their efforts be a more integral part of the
OSGeo family. I know that they can immediately benefit from help with
translation of documentation and tutorials, so there is much to gain
for both parties.

Regards,

-- 
Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/
Nelson Inst. for Env. Studies, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/education/
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