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<p><b>Press release</b></p>
<h2>Open Source Geospatial Foundation Created to Strengthen
Collaborative Development of Open Geospatial Technologies</h2>
<p><b>OSGEO to provide an umbrella for community-led GIS and mapping
projects</b></p>
<p>March 06, 2006 - The open source geospatial community today
announced the formation of the <a href="http://www.osgeo.org">Open
Source Geospatial Foundation</a>,
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 in February 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.</p>
<p>On February 4th, OSGEO held its first meeting in Chicago with 25
participants representing 18 groups and over 20 different open source
geospatial projects, and 39 other parties participating via Internet
Relay Chat. At this meeting, the participants took important steps in
forming and organizing a foundation to develop and support open source
geospatial technologies, including defining the foundation's name,
structure and vision. The consensus reached at the Chicago meeting
paves the way to establish a productive, inclusive foundation.</p>
<p>The Chicago meeting also resulted in the appointment of an initial
board of directors that 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 open
source projects and technologies. The initial five directors of OSGEO
are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Arnulf Christl - <a href="http://www.mapbender.org">Mapbender</a>,
CCGIS, Germany;</li>
<li>Chris Holmes - <a href="http://www.geoserver.org/">GeoServer</a>/<a
href="http://www.geotools.org/">GeoTools</a>, The Open Planning
Project, U.S.;</li>
<li>Gary Lang - <a href="http://mapguide.osgeo.org/">MapGuide</a>,
Autodesk, U.S.;</li>
<li>Markus Neteler - <a href="http://grass.itc.it/">GRASS</a>,
Istituto Trentino Di Cultura, Italy;</li>
<li>Frank Warmerdam - <a href="http://www.gdal.org/">GDAL/OGR</a>,
Canada.</li>
</ul>
<p>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 at <a
href="http://www.foss4g2006.org/">FOSS4G</a> this fall.</p>
<p>OSGEO draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the <a
href="http://www.apache.org/">Apache Foundation</a>,
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 added recently further 24 members from the broader open
source geospatial community through a public nomination and election
process to reach 45 voting members.</p>
<p>Initial OSGEO projects are <a href="http://www.geotools.org/">GeoTools</a>,
<a href="http://www.mapbender.org">Mapbender</a>, <a
href="http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net/">MapBuilder</a>, <a
href="http://mapguide.osgeo.org/">MapGuide</a>, <a
href="http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/">MapServer</a>, <a
href="http://www.gdal.org/">GDAL/OGR</a>, <a
href="http://grass.itc.it/">GRASS</a>, and <a
href="http://www.ossim.org/">OSSIM</a>.</p>
<p>The foundation will not require that OSGEO software projects to be
licensed under any one particular open source license, but will require
that all OSGEO software be released under an open source license
approved by the <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source
Initiative (OSI)</a>.
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. </p>
<p>The foundation will also be pursuing goals beyond software
development, such as promoting more open access to government produced
spatial data, which is a major problem outside of North America. </p>
<p><b>About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation</b></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.osgeo.org">Open Source Geospatial Foundation</a>
(OSGEO), is 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.</p>
<p>For more information, write to <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:info@osgeo.org">info@osgeo.org</a> and see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.osgeo.org/">http://www.osgeo.org/</a><br>
</p>
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