OSGeo comes into existence
Many are calling yesterday’s meeting (and subsequent decisions that were made) a watershed moment for the Open Source GIS software community. I for the most part agree with that sentiment. I am excited that the initial board members that were chosen represent a variety of software projects and a variety of personalities. I think we were able to hone down the issues that people had mostly discussed via email on the maillist to things we could all agree on.
I must say that Autodesk was a gracious and proactive host. Their involvement throughout the last few months (including the ill-fated MapServer foundation/naming announcement) has been admirable. They have listened to the community, acted appropriate in both their interest and the interest of the community, and shown that they are willing to work with what already exists in the Open Source GIS ecosystem. Missteps that the initial group made (mostly the fact that foundation stuff was discussed and proposed under an NDA that was only to cover the fact that Autodesk was releasing a bunch of software under an Open Source license) have not only been recoverable — they have been instructive. The formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is a result of that learning process.
I think that most of the uproar proceeding the initial announcement was related to naming and the idea that the MapServer project was exclusively involved in the formation of a foundation. Now that we have gone beyond that, many opportunities for more structured cooperation and collaboration between various Open Source projects that elect to join the foundation now exist. The common ground we articulated and the organization we have proposed will allow the projects under the OSGeo umbrella to deal with issues that a project by itself could only do with much difficulty — outreach, common and low-overhead infrastructure, a potential entity to flow through aggregate funding to a project, etc.
Another thing that I find exciting is the possibility that by being in the foundation, software projects are structurally encouraged to collaborate. I’ve reinvented my fair share of wheels, and many of the projects that are in OSGeo have done so also. That the projects in the foundation will be overtly encouraged to collaborate is in my opinion a great thing. “Building the stack” as was said yesterday.
The board members have an unenviable amount of work to do to bootstrap OSGeo into existence, but we came away from the meeting with the principles that the board can implement. All of these developments will mean a brighter and more organized future for Open Source GIS.