[FOSS-GPS] Introduction

[Risto H. Kurppa]

Hi there!

It's cool to see that already after 40 hours after the list was
created we are about 70 people here. I see this as a proof that
there's a need for a list like this or that people are interested for
cross-project communications.

So I'm the guy who came up with the idea (see
http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/a-mailing-list-for-the-floss-gps-community/).
I'm not a developer myself, just a linux/foss activist. I bumped to a
project that didn't have any mans to contact the community or other
developers so I thought a shared list this might be useful to report
experiences, patches and so on to other users and foss-gps seemed like
a 'niche' where I wasn't able to find a list that would fill the need.
Why would every small project don't need their own mailing list where
only five people join when they can discuss it here and get more
people interested. It's also handy that here you can make
announcements of new releases, also alpha/beta releases and get
community feedback before the actual stable launch is made.

So me.. I study physics at University of Helsinki, Finland and work
there as well, in the Electronics lab. I'm not directly working with
GPS related stuff but I have Openmoko Freerunner phone and I'm
interested in GPS applications for the phone. I've also contributed a
bit to Openstreetmap now that I have a tool to record GPS traces.
Mostly I've been using Tangogps, Viking and JOSM. On the phone I also
have Orrery (see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Orrery) to show the
stars, I think that's a cool program :) I also have AGPS (it's just to
see if the GPS has a connection and some more features, as far as I
know it actually doesn't use the AGPS technology) and GPSsight
(http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GPS_Sight)

I was delighted to see a project like
http://www.goldencheetah.org/index.html. I ride bike too so I'll
propably give it a try.

Any developers or users of these programs around here?

Let the discussion flow :)

oh, and if you know people or projects that could benefit from this
list, let them know about it!


r


-- 
| risto h. kurppa
| risto at kurppa dot fi
| http://risto.kurppa.fi