[OSGeo-Discuss] Geo4All - Empowering academics and educators globally - requesting colleagues to share Geo4All ideas at Geography Awareness Week

[Suchith Anand]

Dear colleague,


20 years back academics and educators (esp. in  developing countries) struggled to start GIS courses for thier students and had to beg to vendors for some "free" licences .Now they dont need any "charity" from any vendors, as they are fully empowered and can start courses as they wish without any permissions from any vendor owners . We want academics globally to be fully empowered  from now and   give software as they wish to thier students education. By  making free and open software and educational resources available for all has empowered academics and educators globally and brought down the "Iron Curtains" that  some  vendors have tried to create in education. Now no vendors  can dictate terms to any academic or educator or student. We want academics to be in full control of education from now not any vendors.


I would like to thank the OSGeo Live community for making available Version 10.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection that has been released, ready for the FOSS4G conference in Bonn, Germany - the annual global event of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

OSGeo Live  is an excellent resource for academics and educators around the world to teach geospatial science and give away the software for free to thier students thereby empowering them in the true sense. This  excellent resource is made  available to the global community thanks to the hardwork and selfless dedication of hundreds of  volunteers (Developers, packagers, documenters and translators) in addition to thousands who have been involved in building the packaged software. Thank you all for making this possible.

OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine, pre-installed with robust open source geospatial software, which can be trialled without installing anything.


OSGeo Live  includes:


  *       Over 50 quality geospatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
  *       Free world maps and sample datasets
  *       Project Overview and step-by-step Quickstart for each application
  *       Lightning presentation of all applications, along with speaker's script
  *       Translations to multiple languages



Details at  http://live.osgeo.org


Download details at  http://live.osgeo.org/en/download.html


Contents overview at https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/overview.html



I request all colleagues globally to make use of opportunities like Geography Awareness Week (November 13 - 19, 2016) and other important Geography events  like OSM Week 2016, GIS Day 2016    etc to spread Geo4All ideas and give away OSGeo Live DVD, USB   to your colleagues and  students so they dont have to buy any properitery GIS software and truly empowering them. By doing so, you are  gifting millions of dollars of software to your students (if i may borrow some ideas from our properitery friends!  :-) So go ahead and gift software for free from now at all  Geography Awareness Week and all other key GIS events... We want all academics from now be the owners of the software and tools . You dont have to get permission from any properitery GIS vendor owners to start your courses or gift software to your students!


Geo4All is and will be always open to all projects and initiatives that support Open Principles in Education. We have a duty and long term view on Open Principles in education to ensure that free and open geospatial education opportunities  are available not just to current generation but also to our future generations...

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand

http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All - Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science




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