MapServer Foundation - Open Letter

[Bart van den Eijnden]

This is great news indeed. Very exciting.

Must have been a lot of hard work behind the scenes!

Thanks for pushing Mapserver into a stable future, as you said a lot of
people depend on it.

Best regards,
Bart

> An Open Letter to the MapServer Open Source Web Mapping Community
>
> November 28, 2005
>
> Greetings MapServer community,
>
> We are pleased to share with you some exciting news about the future of
> open source web mapping.
>
> Over the past few years MapServer adoption has grown ten-fold and has
> become the web mapping platform of choice for many businesses, government
> agencies, nonprofit groups and individuals. The MapServer developers have
> added powerful new features. The community has enjoyed three incredible
> conferences and continues to support each other and enhance the community.
>
> We want to ensure that this success and momentum continues for the
> MapServer product and community. MapServer continues to run well in
> diverse environments and its rich set of features play an indispensable
> role in many organizations. More than ever, we are committed to improving
> MapServer and providing exceptional value to the community.
>
> To this end, we take this opportunity to share two bits of news: the
> creation of the MapServer Foundation and welcoming the addition of
> Autodesk's next-generation web mapping platform (previously known as Tux)
> as open source into the foundation.
>
> MapServer Foundation
>
> We are delighted to announce the creation of the MapServer Foundation
> (mapserverfoundation.org). The foundation is a nonprofit organization
> whose goal is to provide a supportive framework for open, collaborative
> development of geospatial software. Several groups and individuals are
> collaborating to help launch and sponsor the new foundation. Financial
> support from Autodesk will allow us to get the foundation up and running.
> In this letter, we present some ideas of how we think the foundation can
> help the community, but these ideas need broader discussion and debate
> within the community.
>
> We looked to other successful open source movements, such as Apache, to
> see how our community could benefit from the creation of an independent
> foundation. It is clear that the time has come to create a formal
> infrastructure to help further support and promote the professional open
> source web mapping development environments and communities. While
> initially focused on web mapping projects, we hope the foundation will
> adopt other open source geospatial projects that need a home.
>
> Forming the foundation is only the beginning, as we now seek community
> involvement and participation. The foundation will have a governance model
> that allows it to be run by a Board of Directors that represents the
> community. How it is ultimately going to be run is up to the members of
> the community. The foundation will also have a set of bylaws that provide
> structure and can be amended through a community voting process.
>
> Role of the foundation
>
> The first priority for the foundation is to engage the broader MapServer
> community. Members of the community are encouraged to join and get
> involved. Consider this letter as your invitation to participate. The
> community web site is the place where you, as a user and participant in
> the community, can follow and contribute to the development of the
> MapServer Foundation family of projects.
>
> The primary responsibilities of the foundation may include:
>
>     * Support code repository and other project infrastructure
>     * Formalized process for decision-making (e.g. where to host the next
> conference)
>     * Legal protection for the source code and developers of the software
>     * Paying for development work on minor improvements of the platform
>     * Acting as a central repository for marketing, branding and
> professional image development of the product
>     * Providing process for mitigating disputes
>     * Financial support for advocacy, sponsorship, community events and
> conferences
>
> Many of these community-related functions have been overseen in an ad-hoc
> manner or deferred to the University of Minnesota or other organizations
> in the past. The foundation will streamline the coordination of legal,
> administrative and governance efforts.
>
> As MapServer will now be officially managed by the foundation, it no
> longer makes sense to call it UMN MapServer. Product branding is also
> becoming more important and this is a good opportunity to introduce a more
> visual name for the product. We propose calling it MapServer Cheetah. This
> presents a fast and agile image that suits the product well and will help
> differentiate it from other MapServer products.
>
> MapServer Cheetah & MapServer Enterprise
>
> We are also very excited about Autodesk's decision to release their next
> generation web mapping platform into the open source community through the
> MapServer Foundation. This adds further legitimacy to our open source
> development platform. Their product will be named MapServer Enterprise and
> is the successor to Autodesk MapGuide but built on an entirely new
> architecture.
>
> MapServer Enterprise and MapServer Cheetah will be run as two separate but
> parallel projects. There are no plans to merge them into one but we aim to
> share technologies between the two projects wherever possible. We also
> hope to provide utilities that allow the community to easily use one or
> both platforms.
>
> MapServer Enterprise will be licensed using the OSI-approved GNU Lesser
> General Public License (LGPL). MapServer Cheetah will continue to be
> licensed under an MIT-style open source license. Autodesk is eager to
> participate in an open and transparent development process driven by
> independent guidance from the community. We encourage you to check out
> MapServer Enterprise, which is available today on the community web site.
>
> We are proud to be part of this community and we hope you will join us in
> establishing the MapServer Foundation. For more information on how to get
> involved, please visit the community site at: mapserverfoundation.org and
> join the mailing list discussions.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Steve Lime, Chair, MapServer Technical Steering Committee (MTSC)
> Yewondwossen Assefa, MTSC Member
> Howard Butler, MTSC Member
> Daniel Morissette, MTSC Member
> Perry Nacionales, MTSC Member
> Frank Warmerdam, MTSC Member
> Tom Burk, University of Minnesota
> David McIlhagga, DM Solutions Group
> Tyler Mitchell
> Claude Philipona, Camptocamp SA and FOSS4G 2006 organizing committee
> Gary Lang, Autodesk
>
>