The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is pleased to announce that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has accepted their application (PDF) for non-profit status under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Our 501(c)(4) status declares that OSGeo is a Social Welfare Organization. This determination affirms OSGeo’s role in serving the public through their mission, focused around Open Source Geospatial software.

This determination helps ensure that the organization will not have to pay US federal taxes on money accumulated toward the fulfilment of their mission. Unfortunately, unlike a 501(c)(3) (Charitable) status, this does not allow financial contributors to OSGeo to treat the contributions as a charitable contribution which can have a tax benefit for US tax payers. There should still be no problem with commercial organizations treating contributions to OSGeo as a business expense.

OSGeo owes a special debt to past Executive Director Tyler Mitchell, and current Treasurer Daniel Morissette who have carried this process to a successful conclusion after several years of work. Current OSGeo President, Jeff McKenna, says “Both Daniel and Tyler should be thanked by the entire community for their dedication to such a challenging task. Our future foundation events, and OSGeo in general, will benefit from their hard work for years to come.”

About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data.  The Foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader 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.

On 7th Sep 2013 the final results from the 2013 elections for the open seats of the OSGeo Board of Directors have been published. There were four seats open and they have been filled by (in no particular order):

• Jáchym Čepický
• Jorge Sanz
• Bart van den Eijnden
• Gérald Fenoy

Thanks to all candidates for going through the elections and exposing themselves. All six candidates received excellent support with more then 60 votes each. Overall voting participation was 72% (129 out of 180) and there were no tie scores to arbitrate. Thanks to all Charter Members who voted!

The complete resulting OSGeo Board is:

• Anne Ghisla
• Bart van den Eijnden
• Gérald Fenoy
• Cameron Shorter
• Daniel Morissette
• Frank Warmerdam
• Gérald Fenoy
• Jáchym Čepický
• Jeff McKenna
• Jorge Sanz

With the election results published the new board of directors becomes immediately effective.

OSGeo wishes to thank the outgoing directors for their continued support of OSGeo and for helping to run a fantastic organizations with a great membership and lots of energy. We thank all candidates who stood in this election and all OSGeo Charter Members for their contribution and votes.

The OSGeo-Live geospatial software collection version 7.0 has been released, featuring more than sixty open source, standards compliant geospatial desktop applications, web applications and frameworks. A complete installation kit and high-quality sample data in multiple industry standard formats are included. The OSGeo Live will be officially launched at FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham, UK, 17-21 September, 2013.

Release Highlights

Projects new to this release include:

• GeoNode — a web-based application and platform for developing geospatial information systems (GIS) and for deploying spatial data infrastructures (SDI)
• Leaflet — a modern, open source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps
• ncWMS — a Web Map Service (WMS) for geospatial data stored in CF-compliant NetCDF files
• netCDF dataset — daily maximum temperature and rainfall, worldwide

All geospatial applications on the disc have been updated to their latest stable releases.

About OSGeo-Live

OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux (version 12.04 LTS). OSGeo-Live is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software. All applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from a DVD or USB drive, or running in a Virtual Machine environment. Each featured package is accompanied by both a publication quality one page descriptive summary and a short tutorial on how to get started using it.

http://live.osgeo.org

OSGeo-Live includes:

• Over sixty quality geospatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Free world maps and geodata
• One page overview and quick start guide for every application
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations to multiple languages

Credits

Over 160 people have directly helped with OSGeo-Live packaging, documenting and translating, and thousands have been involved in building the packaged software.

Packagers, documenters and translators include:

Activity Workshop, Agustín Dí­ez, Aikaterini Kapsampeli, Alan Beccati, Alan Boudreault, Alessandro Furieri, Alexander Bruy, Alexander Kleshnin, Alexander Muriy, Alexandre Dube, Alexey Ardyakov, Alex Mandel, Amy Gao, Andrea Antonello, Andrea Yanza, Andrey Syrokomskiy, Andry Rustanto, Angelos Tzotsos, Anna Muñoz, Antonio Falciano, Anton Novichikhin, Anton Patrushev, Argyros Argyridis, Ariel Núñez, Assumpció Termens, Astrid Emde, Barry Rowlingson, Benjamin Pross, Brian Hamlin, Bruno Binet, Cameron Shorter, Christophe Tufféry, Christos Iossifidis, Cristhian Pin, Damian Wojsław, Dane Springmeyer, Daniel Kastl, Daria Svidzinska, David Mateos, Denis Rykov, Diego González, Diego Migliavacca, Dimitar Misev, Dmitry Baryshnikov, Dominik Helle, Edgar Soldin, Eike Hinderk Jürrens, Elena Mezzini, Eric Lemoine, Estela Llorente, Etienne Delay, Etienne Dube, Evgeny Nikulin, Fran Boon, François Prunayre, Frank Gasdorf, Frank Warmerdam, Friedjoff Trautwein, Gavin Treadgold, Giuseppe Calamita, Gerald Fenoy, Grigory Rozhentsov, Guy Griffiths, Hamish Bowman, Haruyuki Seki, Henry Addo, Hernan Olivera, Howard Butler, Hyeyeong Choe, Ian Edwards, Ian Turton, Ilya Filippov, Jackie Ng, Jan Drewnak, Jane Lewis, Javier Rodrigo, Javier Sánchez, Jesús Gómez, Jim Klassen, Jing Wang, Jinsongdi Yu, Jody Garnett, Johan Van de Wauw, John Bryant, Jorge Arévalo, Jorge Sanz, José Antonio Canalejo, José Vicente Higón, Judit Mays, Klokan Petr Pridal, Kristof Lange, kuzkok, Lance McKee, Lars Lingner, Luca Delucchi, Lucía Sanjaime, Mage Whopper, Manuel Grizonnet, Marc-André Barbeau, Marco Curreli, Marco Puppin, Marc Torres, Margherita Di Leo, Maria Vakalopoulou, Mario Andino, Mark Leslie, Massimo Di Stefano, Mauricio Miranda, Mauricio Pazos, Maxim Dubinin, Michaël Michaud, Michael Owonibi, Micha Silver, Mike Adair, Milena Nowotarska, M Iqnaul Haq Siregar, Nacho Varela, Nadiia Gorash, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Ned Horning, Nobusuke Iwasaki, Oliver Tonnhofer, Òscar Fonts, Otto Dassau, Pasquale Di Donato, Patric Hafner, Paul Meems, Pavel, Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Pirmin Kalberer, Raf Roset, Ricardo Pinho, Roald de Wit, Roberta Fagandini, Roberto Antolin, Roberto Antolí­n, Roger Veciana, Ruth Schoenbuchner, Samuel Mesa, Scott Penrose, Sergey Grachev, Sergio Baños, Simon Cropper, Simon Pigot, Stefan A. Tzeggai, Stefan Hansen, Stefan Steiniger, Stephan Meissl, Steve Lime, Thierry Badard, Thomas Baschetti, Thomas Gratier, Tom Kralidis, Toshikazu Seto, Trevor Wekel, Valenty González, Vera, Xianfeng Song, Yoichi Kayama, Zhengfan Lin

Sponsoring organisations

• The Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGeo provides the primary development & hosting infrastructure and personnel for the OSGeo-Live project, and infrastructure for many of the software projects themselves. http://www.osgeo.org/
• LISAsoft provides sustaining resources and staff toward the management and packaging of software onto the Live DVD. http://www.lisasoft.com
• Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at the University of California, Davis provides hardware resources and development support to the OSGeo Live project. http://ice.ucdavis.edu
• Remote Sensing Laboratory at the National Technical University of Athens, provides hardware resources and development support to the OSGeo-Live project. http://www.ntua.gr
• The DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS teams provide and quality-assure many of the core packages. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS

The GRASS GIS community is delighted to present the outcome of the 4th Community Sprint that took place in a warm and sunny Prague, Czech Republic, from July 12 to July 18, 2013. The event happened after the Geoinformatics conference at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The Community Sprint was once more a creative gathering of both long-term and new developers, as well as users.
This meeting was held in the light of 30 YEARS OF GRASS GIS!

We wish to cordially thank the Department of Mapping and Cartography, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague for hosting and technical support. In particular, we gratefully acknowledge our association sponsors OSGeo  and FOSSGIS e.V., and many individual donors: Peter Löwe, Andrea Borruso, Massimo Di Stefano, Alessandro Sarretta, Joshua Campbell, Andreas Neumann, Jon Eiriksson, Luca Casagrande, Karyn O Newcomb, Holger Naumann, Anne Ghisla, Helena Mitasova and Lubos Mitas, Dimitris Tamp, Mark Seibel, Markus Metz, and Tawny Gapinski. These financial contributions were used to cover costs such as meals and to help reducing travelling and accommodation expenses for participants with far arrival who came on own expenses.

Developers and users who joined the event came from various countries like Italy, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, Sri Lanka/France, USA and Germany.
The Community Sprint focused on:

• testing/bugfixing of the upcoming GRASS 7 version,
• backporting new functionalities to the stable GRASS 6.4 series,
• testing/bugfixing related to Mac OS X, MS-Windows and Linux,
• presenting and developing the new Temporal GIS Algebra in GRASS 7,
• connecting GRASS 7 with the planetary science software ISIS,
• discussing integration with rasdaman.org software, a powerful multidimensional raster processor,
• creating 3D vector test data for 3D interpolation,
• discussing vector conflation,
• discussing Bundle Block Adjustments,
• presenting the state of image processing in GRASS 7, and discussing its future,
• improving documentation, with focus on image processing and Temporal GIS Algebra,
• developing/refactoring and bugfixing several wxGUI’s components,
• further developing customizable wxGUI Toolboxes concept,
• improving translation in Polish and Romanian languages,
• fixing v.krige in GRASS7 and proposing merge with the recently developed v.kriging module,
• meeting between Google Summer of Code 2013 mentor and students.

A lot of topic oriented discussions happened among small groups of participants: for more detailed information, please visit the Wiki pages at http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Prague_2013 and the related discussion page at http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:GRASS_Community_Sprint_Prague_2013

About GRASS GIS
The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial  imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

GRASS GIS Development Team, July 2013

GRASS GIS 6.4.3 released – Birthday release for 30 years of GRASS GIS
http://grass.osgeo.org

We are pleased to announce the release of a new stable version of GRASS GIS. This release fixes bugs discovered in 6.4.2 version of the program and adds a number of new features. This release includes over
830 updates to the source code since 6.4.2. As a stable release series, the 6.4 line will enjoy long-term support and incremental enhancements while preserving backwards-compatibility with the entire GRASS 6 line.

Key improvements of this release include some new functionality (assistance for topologically unclean vector data), major speedup for some vector modules, fixes in the vector network modules, fixes for the wxPython based portable graphical interface (attribute table management, wxNVIZ, and Cartographic Composer). A number of new modules have been added for processing LANDSAT and MODIS satellite data, and a new vector statistics module is also introduced. Many new symbols and north arrows are available, and the user will find an improved and easier to use wizard for creating custom project locations with precise map projection and datum support. Community-contributed add-on modules are now more easily and robustly installed from an online archive. Other major developments include enhancements to the Python scripting library and numerous software-compatibility fixes and translation updates. Important is the enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support, fixes in case of missing system DLLs). And we welcome Romanian as our twenty-fourth language!

Source code download:

• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.3.tar.gz

Binaries download:

• winGRASS 6.4.3 standalone installer
• winGRASS 6.4.3 in OSGeo4W installer
• Arch Linux
• openSUSE One-Click installer
• Ubuntu
• Mac OS X

• … further packages will follow shortly.

To get the GRASS GIS 6.4.3 source code directly from SVN:
svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20130727_grass_6_4_3

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and map production, spatial modeling, and 3D visualization. GRASS GIS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. GRASS GIS can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

Fourth (and last) release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 with improvements and stability fixes
A fourth release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 is now available.

Source code download:

• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.3RC4.tar.gz

Binaries download:

• winGRASS 6.4.3RC4 standalone installer
• winGRASS 6.4.3RC4 in OSGeo4W installer
• Arch Linux
• openSUSE One-Click installer
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow leopard
• … further packages will follow shortly.

To get the GRASS GIS 6.4.3RC4 source code directly from SVN:
 svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20130710_grass_6_4_3RC4

Key improvements of this release include some new functionality (assistance for topologically unclean vector data), fixes in the vector network modules, fixes for the wxPython based portable graphical interface (attribute table management, wxNVIZ, and Cartographic Composer), fixes in the location wizard for Datum transform selection and support for PROJ.4 version 4.8.0, improvements for selecting the Python version to be used, enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support, fixes in case of missing system DLLs), and more translations (esp. Romanian).

Please contact Markus Neteler ([email protected] – GRASS GIS PSC Chair) for further details.
Wait – it is also possible to buy a round of beer for the developers with a quick click using the PayPal “Buy [pizza/beer/...] Now” button below: (… more pizza & beer for the developers)

About the Community Sprint

Join us at FOSS4G Central and Eastern Europe (FOSS4G-CEE) 2013 from 16th – 20th June, National Library of Romania, Bucharest, Romania.

You will meet well known Keynote Speakers (random order): Jeff McKenna, Paul C. Smits, Jáchym Čepický, Schuyler Erle, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Dirk Frigne, Markus Neteler, Alyssa Wright, and Radu Puchiu.

Check the long list of Practical Workshops and Oral Presentations at: http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/program/schedule
Check out for the additional Code Sprint, the Open GeoData Hackathon, and the Open Data Side Event.

How to arrive? See http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/venue/map

Disclaimer: strictly offtopic Just a personal health state report, nutshell version…

Maybe some have noted my temporal “disappearance” from email and such in January. The reason was that I spent almost 50 days in hospital since beginning of December. So, what happened?

On 10th December I went to the “Centro Gallucci” of the Padua University Hospital for “routine” examinations in preparation for a future surgery (I know of my heart problems for years; they did not have much effect on my life since I was asymptomatic). But after the initial examinations they scheduled me for an emergency surgery. Err, little shock…

Eventually, I got the open heart surgery on 3rd January (“Bentall-De Bono” method, 7hs of surgery in total, 2hs heart in standstill). During the surgery they realized that the heart state was even worse than known before, with an estimated life expectancy of perhaps months only not having it done immediately (they got me from the cliff). Anyway, the surgery went well, I have now a mechanical valve + ascending aorta (so, you can hear me now :p). BTW: you go in awake, the Padua staff was really nice. And interesting to see how they prepare the surgery, a busy moment (then send make you sleep in no time).

On 10th January I was send to the rehabilitation center (Codivilla-Putti hospital, Cortina d’Ampezzo). However, I got a complication which is not uncommon: inner bleedings with a starting cardiac tamponade as discovered some days later. On 14th January, during heavy snowfall at Cortina, high speed ambulance ride back to Padua, with immediate drainage surgery (lung area and heart, removing more than 2l of liquid). Not really fun… (this little surgery also on a Monday, same time, same room, same staff!). But after some days I got way better. Just 10% of my body weight was meanwhile gone.

On 23rd January I was brought back again to the Cortina rehabilitation center where I spend two nice weeks – no more issues so far

Since 5th February I am back home – and will stay here for a longer while. Various odds and ends need to be resolved first – the recovery is long but steady!

D6JJYVCDUD7M