Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Updated on Jan 02, 2024

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Abbreviation OSGeo Type NGO		Founded at Chicago

Motto Your Open Source Compass Founded February 4, 2006; 11 years ago (2006-02-04) Founders Arnulf Christl, Chris Holmes, Gary Lang, Markus Neteler, Frank Warmerdam

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Free and open source geospatial community. It also 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.

OSGeo draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the Apache Foundation, including a membership composed of individuals drawn from foundation projects who are selected for membership status based on their active contribution to foundation projects and governance.

The foundation pursues goals beyond software development, such as promoting more open access to government produced geospatial data and completely free geodata, such as that created and maintained by the OpenStreetMap project. Education and training are also addressed. Various committees within the foundation work on implementing strategies.

Governance

The OSGeo Foundation is community driven and has an organizational structure consisting of elected members and nine directors, including the president. Software projects have their own governance structure, by requirement. see FAQ. The OSGeo community collaborates via a Wiki, Mailing Lists and IRC.

Projects

OSGeo projects include:

Geospatial Libraries

deegree Java framework

FDO – API (C++, .Net) between GIS application and sources; for manipulating, defining and analyzing geospatial data.

GDAL/OGR – Library between GIS application and sources; for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats (GDAL) and simple features vector data (OGR).

GeoTools – Open source GIS toolkit (Java); to enable the creation of interactive geographic visualization clients.

GEOS – A C++ port of the Java Topology Suite (JTS), a geometry model.

MetaCRS – Projections and coordinate system technologies, including PROJ.4.

PostGIS – Spatial extensions for the PostgreSQL database, enabling geospatial queries.

Desktop Applications

QGIS – Desktop GIS for data viewing, editing and analysis — Windows, Mac and Linux.

GRASS GIS – extensible GIS for image processing and analysing raster, topological vector and graphic data.

OSSIM – Libraries and applications used to process imagery, maps, terrain, and vector data.

Marble – Virtual globe and world atlas.

gvSIG – Desktop GIS for data capturing, storing, handling, analysing and deploying. Includes map editing.

Server

MapServer – Development environment for building for and presenting map applications on the web.

Geomajas – Development software for web-based and cloud based GIS applications.

GeoServer – Allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Written in Java using GeoTools.

rasdaman – raster data manager: flexible, fast, and scalable services on multi-dimensional, spatio-temporal raster data.

Client

GeoMoose – JavaScript Framework for displaying distributed GIS data.

Mapbender – To display, overlay, edit and manage distributed Web Map Services. Framework using PHP and JavaScript.

MapGuide Open Source – Platform for developing and deploying web mapping applications and geospatial web services. Windows-based, native file format.

MapFish – Framework for building rich web-mapping applications based on the Pylons Python web framework.

OpenLayers – AJAX library (API) for accessing geographic data layers of all kinds.

Metadata Catalog

GeoNetwork opensource

pycsw – Lightweight metadata publishing and discovery using Python.

Outreach Projects

Geo for All – Network of educators promoting Open Source geospatial around the world.

OSGeo-Live – Bootable DVD, USB thumb drive or Virtual Machine containing all OSGeo software.

OSGeo4W – a binary distribution of a broad set of open source geospatial software for Windows

Retired Projects

Community MapBuilder

Events

OSGeo runs an annual international conference called FOSS4G – Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial. Starting as early as 2006, this event has drawn over 900 attendees (2011) and is expected to bring in even more each year. It is the main meeting place and educational outreach opportunity for OSGeo members, supporters and newcomers - to share and learn from one another in presentations, hands-on workshops and a conference exhibition.

Community

The OSGeo community is composed of participants from everywhere in the world. As of August 2012, there were 19,160 unique subscribers to the more than 180 OSGeo mailing lists. As of September 2012, OSGeo projects were built upon over 12.7 million lines of code contributed by 657 code submitters including 301 that have contributed within the last 12 months.

Sol Katz Award

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.