[OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Henning Lorenz]

In my opinion, a major challenge is to extend OSGeo beyond it's  
present topical range. Presently, OSGeo deals mainly with "classical"  
GIS, webmapping, and underlying technologies (generalised). I think  
this is also captured in this thread where references to and  
comparison with commercial GIS packages are common, and votes refer to  
GIS functionality (analytical functions, cartography). But geospatial  
is more than that. Investigating and describing the planet Earth in  
three (or four) dimensions is a necessity in Earth Sciences and  
related industry, in engineering (sciences) and societal planning  
(amongst others). This includes data acquisition, processing,  
interpretation and storage in three dimensions (from geological field  
work, drilling, geophysical experiments, in-situ and lab-experiments).  
Often commercial software packages are used for these purposes, but  
also opensource tools are available (OpenDTect, Seismic Unix,  
GMT, ...). The potential user base is broad and numerous, and the  
potential to attract developers high - many researchers, and maybe  
also companies, are used to develop their own tools.

I think it's a challenge in the two meanings of the word. It's  
necessary to do justice to the meaning of geospatial. And I think it  
is difficult to put in practice without a major project as a "catalyst".

Henning