Introduce myself and my projects

[Philip Mark Donaghy]

Hi I read about this foundation in Linux Format LXF-76 and I see that
Markus, who I have met in Trento and Bangkok, is on the board.
Congratulations Markus!

I've been following the open source geography movement for a while as
a tourist but now I am involved in some mapserver projects.

My projects are related to computer assisted dispatch for fire and
police departments in two different countries. In France and in the
US.

I have always been concerned by the licenses. BSD being my preferred
license, I have a question. Is the foundation going to have a
foundation wide licence like the Apache License. And will it be based
on the BSD license? Also what are peoples thoughts on avoiding the
LGPL license?

I would like to get involved in a MapServer project that facilitates
the creation of spatial data from gps receivers.

I think that a nearby project would be very interesting, I think that
google is making the most progress with this. But their algorithm is
not complicated. Basically they find addresses from websites,
categorize the content, and plot it on a map that is created using
query information. I think it would be interesting to have a site that
defaults to your ip address location and use cookies to store
categories that you like.

I would also like to create/assist in a project for a shared
geospatial data repository targeted at governments creating data. For
this to be valuable and interesting to users the datasets would be
validated and modified by real people given privileged access to
editing the data or a copy of the data. The idea would be to create
branches and the ability to merge just like a source code revision
system.

That reminds me, is the foundation going to use the subversion system.
I read that the samba group is going to start using a Bazar NG system
which are distributed repositories. Sounds interesting.

Some developers/people say I my ideas are too costly in infrastructure
which is a valid argument which is why I bring these ideas to a
foundations such as yours. I have also discussed this on the Apache
community mailing lists. If anyone is interested in these ideas then
we should create a project.

--
Philip Donaghy
donaghy.blogspot.com del.icio.us/donaghy/philip
Skype: philipmarkdonaghy
Office: +33 5 56 60 88 02
Mobile: +33 6 20 83 22 62