Happy Birthday OSGeo !!!!!

(Version française)

Yes, it's been 5 years already since the creation of the Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation: OSGeo was born in a meeting that took place in Chicago on February 4th, 2006.

To celebrate this event, OSGeo's Executive Director Tyler Mitchell cooked us the birthday cake that you see here on the right!

OSGeo as we know it today may be 5 years old, but the Open Source Geospatial community itself has been active for much longer. The oldest OSGeo project, GRASS, goes back to 1982, MapServer started around 1995, GDAL/OGR in 1998, and since then the number of projects and community members has been growing exponentially.

Here are a few highlights of the last 5 years since the creation of the Foundation:

• OSGeo went from 8 founding projects in 2006 to 20 software projects today (including 6 in incubation)
• OSGeo's annual FOSS4G conference turned into a truly international event, visiting 4 continents over 5 years
• Over 20 local chapters are active around the world, promoting OSGeo's software and mission in their local language and communities.

Closer to us here, the OSGeo-Quebec local chapter was created in 2008, and over the course of those 2.5 years, we have:

• held our first local OSGeo conference: Rendez-vous OSGeo-Qc in June 2010
• participated with open source tracks and presentations in several geomatics conferences around the province
• continued to hold regular events (mostly 5 à 7) around the province, the next dates are:
• Quebec City, February 16, 2011: Joint OSGeo-Qc/APELLQc 5 à 7 following the first OpenCamp Qc
• Montreal, March 14, 2011: OSGeo-Qc 5 à 7 before the Montreal Code Sprint
• Montreal, March 15-18, 2011: OSGeo Montreal Code Sprint 2011

There would be lots more to talk about, but it's time to have a piece of cake. Happy Birthday OSGeo!