PowerPoint Presentation
Growing the FOSS4G CommunityJeff McKennaGateway Geomatics
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
- thanks for having me in Japan again- from Canada- work background (DM Solutions Group, to Gateway Geomatics)
Outline What the community means to me
In the beginning...
Current community
FOSS4G conferences
Local chapter growth
Future
Challenges
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
- only 20 slides-
Community?
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
a body of persons of common and
especially professional interests
scattered through a larger society
- coming together through email lists, IRC sessions, annual conferences, local events
- compared to the sports community: - 21 years of competitive ice hockey- brother played in the top professional level for 8 years- global community
- now i have been involved in the Open Source geospatial community for over 10 year
Without the Community
I am... just another geographer
unable to access other resources
bored
looking for places to travel :)
looking for people to have a drink with :)
unemployed
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
- i am not a developer
- i can't develop software from scratch
But With the Community
I am... part of a network of thousands of users,
developers, and decision makers
able to partner with other organizations
always busy
able to travel :)
recognized as a key member of the
community
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
And I am Able to
Become... chair of the OSGeo conference
committee
MapServer Project Steering Committee
member
Founding and Charter member of OSGeo
Founding co-chair of OSGeo Ottawa
local chapter
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
- become MapServer for Windows (MS4W) maintainer- become MapServer documentation lead- become a power user in the MapServer community
In the Beginning...
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
individual user meetings across the
world
no global organization
many projects were immature
- 2003 MapServer Users meeting contained no other Open Source projects
- no ability for organizations to support Open Source in general (sponsorship)
Important Events
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
OSGIS 2004, Ottawa, Canada
- projects included: MapBender, Mapbuilder, GRASS, MapServer, JUMP, PostGIS
Important Events
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
- members of MapServer community participated (workshop at end of conference)
- my first introduction to the 'rest' of the Open Source geospatial community (e.g. Italian meeting)
- Max exchanged with DM Solutions studying GRASS use for Environment Canada
Important Events
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
+
= ???
Important Events
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
OSGeo founded in February/March
2006
goal is to promote the use of Open
Source geospatial software
structure includes Board of Directors,
Executive Director, and Committees
- projects from Web Mapping (MapServer, OpenLayers), Desktop (QGIS, GRASS), libraries (FDO, GDAL), other (Geonetwork0
Current Community
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
1474 person yearsEffort$81,072,382Replacement Cost200Contributors16Projects5,450,649Source Lines of Code
OSGeo Stack:http://www.ohloh.net/stacks/151/report
Becoming an OSGeo Project
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
Code is under an OSI approved license
Geospatial
Mature
Strong user community
Substantial and diverse developer community
...
http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/evaluation.html
The MapServer Project
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
ready to graduate and become an
official OSGeo project
5.2 release in July 2008, with nearly
200 tickets closed
5.4 release in early 2009
- 1993 thesis- open source 1998- starting to focus more on user needs (installers, documentation)
FOSS4G Conferences
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
steady growth in attendance
large corporate sponsors (Google,
ESRI)
2010 host to be determined by
December
- 2006 in Lausanne, Switzerland (CamptoCamp)- 2007 in Victoria, Canada (Refractions)- 2008 in South Africa-
Sol Katz Award
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
Awarded annually by OSGeo to those
that have demonstrated leadership
in the community
- 2005 FrankW- 2006 Markus Neteler- 2007 Steve Lime- 2008 Paul Ramsey
- Sophia Parafina (Ionic/Erdas)
Local Chapters
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
steady growth
locations include Australia-NZ,
Germany, Finland, UK, Korea, Spain,
Italy, France, Quebec, Japan, India,
South Africa, Brazil, Netherlands,..
- 2008 Annual General meeting
What about the Future?
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
focus on more OSGeo local events
more reliance on local chapter work
possibly a community-based site for
OSGeo users
FOSS4G2009 in Sydney Australia
improved installers for projects
Is the Community Easy to
Work With?
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
NO! Is my bug fixed?
The documentation is out-of-date
I'm new,...
When is the next release?
Challenges
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
language barriers
avoid being NA-centric
giving credit to both small and large
organizations
attracting sponsorship to support the
community
What Does theCommunity Need?
2008-11-07 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
YOU!
documentation
testing
answering questions on mailing lists
2008-11-05 | OSGeo 2008. All rights reserved
Jeff McKennaGateway [email protected]
Questions?Shibuya: 2008-11-03