[Marketing] Re: Subject: Open source GIS software and interest in collaboration

[Frank Warmerdam]

sliuzas at itc.nl wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I would like to point out that the ILWIS software for GIS and Remote
> Sensing has recently gone open source. see http://52north.org for details.

Dr. Sliuzas,

Yes, this is great news!  When the original announcement was made I forwarded
it to the OSGeo announcement mailing list and web site.

> I am also interested in possible future collaboration for a joint
> conference in the FOSS series of events. I am involved in the GISDECO
> network www.itc.nl/gisdeco which has organised a series of fairly low cost
> workshops/conferences on GIS for developing countries.

I am cc:ing this email to our Marketing Committee who normally try and
organize OSGeo presence at conferences.  Certainly, it would be desirable
to participate.

> I'd like to know whether there would be chance to join hands for a future
> event say in 2009 or 2010.

Our premiere event is the FOSS4G conferences, and we certain desire to have
participation from as many geospatial open source projects and activities
as possible.  For 2008 the conference in Cape Town and is focusing on
open source for developing countries.

   http://www.foss4g2008.org/

I hope that ILWIS and 52north will be represented.  In particular I think
an ILWIS workshop would be a very valuable addition to the workshop program.

I am also interested in other ways that we can work more closely with 52north
and the ILWIS project.  One item that comes to mind is inclusion of ILWIS
as an option in our "in development" multi-project windows installer (OSGeo4W).
If there is someone involved in the ILWIS project that would be interested in
assisting that would be appreciated.  They could join the OSGeo4W mailing list
at:

   http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeo4w

I'm also interested in possibilities for closer cooperation between ILWIS
and OSGeo projects.  I see that ILWIS is already using GDAL but that the
existing ILWIS binaries are distributed with GDAL 1.2 which is quite ancient.
I see that ILWIS already uses PROJ (which I hadn't realized before).  Hopefully
we can build on these technical linkages for a closer technical partnership.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org