\begin{article}
% vol 6 "News and Events" (there are also two articles under events/)
%
\title{Brief News from the OSGeo Community}
\author{Compiled by Scott Mitchell}
\maketitle
To keep abreast of OSGeo news, watch \url{http://www.osgeo.org/news}, or subscribe to its RSS feed.  This report includes highlights from recent months, plus items specifically sent to the News Editor.
\section{OSGeo Governance}
Four vacant positions on the OSGeo Board of Directors were recently filled. Two new members were elected (Daniel Morissette and Tim Schaub), and two members were re-elected (Arnulf Christl and Frank Wamerdam).  The new and returning directors join Ravi Kumar, Jeff McKenna, Markus Neteler, Chris Schmidt and Geoff Zeiss in making up the full Board.  Board members are elected by charter members, and the tough decisions were made thanks to very high voter turnout from those members. 
The Board positions have a two year term, with half the positions up for election each year.  The charter members of OSGeo are listed at \url{http://www.osgeo.org/charter_members}; a new charter member intake process is scheduled annually.

\section{Conferences}
\subsection{FOSS4G 2009 - Sydney}
The beautiful city of Sydney, Australia hosted the 2009 version of FOSS4G.  This annual event is considered the premier conference for the open source geospatial community, aiming for a ``full-immersion experience in established and leading edge geospatial technologies for developers, users, and people new [to the open source geospatial community].'' Highlights included an array of technical workshops, updates on OSGeo projects, the ``WMS Performance Shootout'' (\url{http://www.osgeo.org/news/2009/foss4g_wmsshootout}), and the awarding of the 2009 Sol Katz Award to Daniel Morissette (\url{http://www.osgeo.org/node/970}).  
\\

\subsection{FOSS4G 2010 - Barcelona}

The FOSS4G series of conferences continued, and has just concluded, in Barcelona Spain, 6-9 September 2010 (\url{http://2010.foss4g.org/}). This year's Sol Katz winner was Professor Helena Mitasova, honouring her wide-ranging contributions to the FOSS4G community (\url{http://www.osgeo.org/node/1069}).


\subsection{Local OSGeo groups: conferences and workshops}

The \textbf{Qu\'ebec Local Chapter} of OSGeo hosted the first Rendez-vous OSGeo Qu\'ebec in Saguenay, Qu\'ebec, June 15-16, 2010. This date coincided with the second anniversary of the local chapter, which was created following a meeting at the same location in June of 2008. OSGeo community members gathered to share their projects and experiences, and heard from a great lineup of invited speakers featuring many key members of the North American OSGeo community. Full details can be found at \url{http://rendez-vous-osgeo-qc.org/2010/english/}.

The \textbf{OSGeo Poland Chapter} co-organized a conference on the GIS applications of open source software. The event took place on May 13-14 in Wroclaw, in co-operation with the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences.  For more info see \url{http://www.gislab.up.wroc.pl/wogis2010/}.

Ever hacked code in an Italian monastery?  The \textbf{Bolsena Code Sprint 2010} was the third annual event held in a monastery overlooking Lago Bolsena. Participants report a great mix of coding progress, fantastic food, exploration of the local area, and great company.  See \url{http://www.osgeo.org/node/990} for more details, and watch for your opportunity to sign up next year.

The \textbf{German local Chapter} has announced a Call for Location (\url{http://www.fossgis.de/konferenz/w/images/f/f5/FOSSGIS-2011_CfL.pdf}) for the 2011 FOSSGIS-Konferenz (\url{http://www.fossgis.de/konferenz}). The 2010 conference was held in Osnabr\"{u}ck from 2-5 March, and featured a special 2-day track on Open Street Maps.

The second \textbf{Open Source GIS UK Conference} was held 21 -- 22 June 2010 at CGS, University of Nottingham. Presenters included Ari Jolma, Arnulf Christl, and Tyler Mitchell, with workshops on topics including gvSIG Desktop \& Mobile, OS OpenSpace and GEOSS. The conference was webcast, and recorded archives are now available at \url{http://cgs.nottingham.ac.uk/~osgis10/os_call2010.html}. 

\subsection{Related upcoming meetings}

\textbf{WebMGS2010 --- the 1st International Workshop on Pervasive Web Mapping, Geoprocessing and Services} --- aims to provide a dedicated gathering place and open forum for researchers, professionals, government decision makers and students to exchange and discuss recent advances in web-based mapping, geospatial information services and applications. The workshop theme, Sensor Web Enablement and Geoprocessing Services, encourages diverse topics related to the new web-based development of geospatial theories, technologies and solutions.  See their website \url{http://webmgs2010.como.polimi.it} for more details.

The University of Prishtina and FLOSS Kosovo are hosting the \textbf{International Software Freedom Conference of Kosova}, which will be held on September 25 and 26 at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Prishtina. Topics cover the breadth of information technology including geospatial topics.  \url{http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=8777}

\section{Google Summer of Code 2010}
OSGeo participated as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2010. This program provides funding for students to work on open source projects under the support of experienced mentors. The projects participating through OSGeo include GDAL, GRASS, Mapbender, Quantum GIS, uDig, OpenJUMP, deegree, OSSIM and MapWindow.

50 good proposals were evaluated, and a very high calibre selection ended up being chosen for the 10 final positions. Students worked with their mentors to get to know their projects even better. You can view the list of 10 finalized projects at \url{http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/org/home/google/gsoc2010/osgeo}.

\section{Project News}
\subsection{Incubation}
The OSGeo Board has recently announced the approval of three projects to enter the incubation process (\url{http://www.osgeo.org/incubator}), and one graduation. Incubation is a stepping stone to becoming a full-fledged OSGeo project. Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation, all of which provide potential users of the software added confidence in the product's viability and safety. Geomajas, GeoServer, and MapFish commenced the incubation process, and deegree graduated.

\textbf{Geomajas} (\url{http://geomajas.org/}) is a free and open source GIS framework for building rich internet applications. It has sophisticated capabilities for displaying and managing geospatial information. Its modular design makes it easily extensible, while a client-server architecture guarantees endless scalability.  The focus of Geomajas is to provide a platform for server-side integration of geospatial data, allowing multiple users to control and manage the data from within their own browsers. In essence, Geomajas provides a set of powerful building blocks, from which the most complex GIS applications can easily be built. A new version of the framework, 1.7.1, was released on August 11, with major improvements to the plug-in system.  See \url{http://geomajas.org/geomajas-1.7.1} for more details.

\textbf{GeoServer} (\url{http://geoserver.org/}) is a server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer is the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, as well as a high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS). GeoServer makes extensive use of the GeoTools Java library.

\textbf{MapFish} (\url{http://mapfish.org/}) is a flexible and complete framework for building rich web-mapping applications. It is based on the Pylons Python web framework, and emphasizes high productivity, and high-quality development. MapFish also provides a complete RIA-oriented JavaScript toolbox. The JavaScript toolbox is composed of the ExtJS, OpenLayers, GeoExt JavaScript toolkits, and specific components for interacting with MapFish web services. MapFish supports several OGC standards, including WMS, WFS, WMC, KML and GML via GeoExt and OpenLayers.

\textbf{deegree} (\url{http://deegree.org/}) is a Java Framework offering the main building blocks for Spatial Data Infrastructures. Its entire architecture is developed using standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO/TC 211 (ISO Technical Committee 211 -- Geographic Information/Geomatics). deegree encompasses OGC Web Services as well as Clients and security components. You are invited to share in the celebration of the project's 10th anniversary at deegree day 2010, the 16th of November, at the University of Bonn; see \url{http://deegreeday.deegree.org/}.

\subsection{MapGuide}
The MapGuide Open Source team has released MapGuide Open Source version 2.1.0 (\url{http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/Release/2.1/Notes}).  Highlights of advances made with this version include many improvements in performance, scalability and stability, an improved error reporting system, raster re-projection, and CS-Map as the coordinate system library.

The project's steering committee has also announced the debut of a ``Sponsorship and Donation Program'' (\url{http://mapguide.osgeo.org/sponsorship}). Donations (contributions under US\$500) help ensure the continued success of the project.  Sponsors (contributing over US\$500) receive the additional advantages of direct input to the direction of the project, priority bug report processing, and marketing benefits.

\subsection{MapServer}
The MapServer (\url{http://mapserver.org/}) team welcomed last holiday season and new year with the release of version 5.6, and subsequent minor releases brought them up to version 5.6.3 (as of 22 March).  New features or enhancements include:
\begin{itemize}
  \item XML Mapfile schema and XSLT
  \item One-pass query processing, making WFS queries on database backends much faster
  \item Improved control of output resolution, allowing map printing at printer resolution using a mapfile defined for screen resolution
  \item Labelling enhancements: ability to repeat labels along a line/multiline 
  \item Security fixes
  \item Performance optimizations (one-pass image loading, optimized large shapefile handling)
  \item Improved OGC web services specifications support
  \item Improvements to MapScript.
\end{itemize}

\noindent For more details please see the full release announcement at \url{http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2009-December/064001.html}.

\subsection{QGIS}

\noindent The Quantum GIS (QGIS) project has been busy! The multi-platform, user-friendly, GPL GIS supporting a wide variety of vector, raster, and database formats (\url{http://www.qgis.org/}), released version 1.4.0, `Enceladus' in January, and version 1.5.0 'Tethys' in July. The newest version includes around 350 bug fixes, nearly 40 new features, on top of 30 new features in version 1.4.  While they claim too many changes to be able to make a short list, some highlights include a new symbology infrastructure, a field calculator, a rapidly improving printed map composer, interface improvements including a python console with syntax colouring and command history, spatial selection, render caching, custom SVG search paths, an angular measurement tool, and customizable attribute forms.

The project is also celebrating a series of recent productive developer meetings. The fourth of the year will be in Wroclaw, Poland, 12-15 November - see \url{http://www.qgis.org/wiki/4._QGIS_Hackfest_in_Wroclaw_2010} for more details. 

\subsection{GDAL/OGR}

\noindent The GDAL/OGR Project recently announced the release of GDAL/OGR 1.7.0. The 1.7.0 release brings many new features, including a number of new raster and vector drivers as well as many improvements to existing drivers, and limited extensions to the GDAL API. Key changes include:

\begin{itemize}
\item new raster drivers: BAG, EPSILON, Northwood/VerticalMapper, R, Rasterlite, SAGA GIS Binary, SRP (USRP/ASRP), EarthWatch .TIL, WKT Raster
\item GDAL PCIDSK driver using the new PCIDSK SDK by default
\item new vector drivers: DXF, GeoRSS, GTM, PCIDSK and VFK
\item new utilities: gdaldem, gdalbuildvrt now compiled by default
\item added support for Python 3.X. Compatibility with Python 2.X preserved
\item removed old-generation Python bindings
\item significantly improved raster drivers: GeoRaster, GeoTIFF, HFA, JPEG2000 JasPer, JPEG2000 Kakadu, NITF
\item significantly improved vector drivers: CSV, KML, SQLite/SpataiLite, VRT.
\end{itemize}
\noindent Full release news is available at \url{http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/Release/1.7.0-News}.
\subsection{GRASS}

\noindent GRASS development has been concentrated in three streams: 
\begin{itemize}
\item GRASS 6.4 is the current stable release, published on September 3 (see \url{http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass640.html} for detailed announcement).  Much of the recent work has concentrated on a new wxPython-based graphical user interface, full support for Python as a scripting language, and the first full stable native Windows port. Since the 6.3.0 release in April 2008, almost 2,900 code modifications have been made, with highlighted changes including:
\begin{itemize}
\item updated Lidar tools
\item new translations
\item new Python support, and
\item processing speed improvements by orders of magnitude for several modules.
\end{itemize}
\item The "GRASS AddOns" mechanism allows modules to be made available outside the main distribution. This allows experimentation with new algorithms that build on GRASS capabilities without affecting the main source stability or direction. Developers can gain relatively quick and liberal access to the SVN repository for AddOns. A wiki page \url{http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_AddOns} shows the large and growing range of available modules.
\item GRASS 7 is a major redevelopment of the source, in which backwards compatibility is not guaranteed, but conversion scripts will be provided.  Many major code rewrites and redesigns are complete, underway, and in planning (\url{http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass7Planning}). A lot of recent work has gone into improvements to the wxGUI and related tools, many of which will hopefully be back-ported into a future GRASS 6.4.1.
\end{itemize}

\subsection{OpenLayers}
\noindent A new stable release of OpenLayers, version 2.10 was announced on the 10th of September.  A full list of updates can be found at \url{http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.10/Notes}, including new support for WMS layers with SVG as image format, for SVG enabled browsers. Previous new features, delivered by version 2.9 back in April, are listed at  \url{http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.9/Notes}.

\end{article}
