Abstract comments

[Ned Horning]

All,

I am preparing an abstract for the joint meeting of the Society for
Conservation Biology and Society for Conservation GIS that will be held in
June in San Jose, California. I would like to introduce OSGeo and discuss
benefits with a strong bias toward conservation research and applications. I
pasted the abstract below and would like to solicit comments. I pulled much
of the text from the website. If the abstract is accepted I will likely come
back here for help on input into the short (15 minute) presentation. Any
suggestions regarding the abstract would be appreciated.

For what it's worth, I have been trying to promote OSGeo concepts within the
conservation community for the last few years and have had limited success.
ESRI has made strong inroads into this community in the USA and people have
been reluctant to explore open source alternatives. ESRI has been quite
generous with software and training donations and Arc-stuff is what people
tend to learn in the University. Jack Dangermond will be the keynote speaker
at the conference and I expect he will have a captive audience. 

All the best,

Ned

--
Title: The Open Source Geospatial Foundation - An opportunity for the
conservation community

The open source software movement is growing in momentum and sophistication
throughout the geoinformatics community.  This growth is evidenced by the
recent formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), a
not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the
collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The
goals of OSGeo fit nicely with the conservation commons' principles of open
access to data, information, and knowledge. The foundation provides
financial, organizational and legal support to the open source geospatial
community and serves 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.
The OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open
source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared
infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. There are many
ways that the conservation community can benefit from OSGeo and vise versa,
including open access to software and data that are vital to achieving
conservation priorities. This presentation will provide an overview of OSGeo
with an emphasis on potential opportunities for the conservation community
and some details about specific projects under way within the Foundation.  

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