Don't "upgrade" to WMS 1.3.0 unless you really have to, stick to 1.1.1

Chances are that you already heard me say something along the lines of "Don't 'upgrade' to  WMS 1.3.0 unless you really have to because it's a mess, stick to WMS 1.1.1 if you can". This may sound like an old story to those who have been around since the adoption of WMS 1.3.0 in 2004, but believe it or not we still hit those 1.3.0 issues today 8 years later. The last time was a few weeks ago and that got me started on that same old rant once again. I figured that I'd archive a copy of it here once and for all, and next time I can just point people to this blog.

The long story

 

"Don't 'upgrade' to  WMS 1.3.0 unless you really have to because it's a mess, stick to WMS 1.1.1 if you can"... well, I may not have used those exact words, but I mean it, WMS 1.3.0 is a pain to support properly, both on the client and on the server side, and should be avoided unless you have very good reasons to switch to it, like requirement for ISO compliance for instance. If you can stick to WMS 1.1.1 then you will be much happier.

I was involved with the OGC revision working group (RWG) that worked on the adoption of WMS 1.3.0 and I had the "chance" (or not?) to witness what happened. The "problem" is that OGC was trying to get WMS 1.3.0 approved as an ISO spec, and the ISO review process forced them to break compatibility with WMS 1.1.1 and older on a few aspects in order to meet the very strict ISO requirements.

One of those aspects was a requirement to honour the axis order defined by EPSG in its database of coordinate systems. In WMS 1.1.1 and older, early day OGC WMS authors and implementers had made a "mistake" and always assumed an x-followed-by-y axis order for coordinates, so the BBOX for EPSG:4326 (WGS84 geographic coordinates in degrees) was treated as:

  BBOX=lon_min, lat_min, lon_max, lat_max

But the EPSG database that WMS refers to defines the axis order for its 4326 SRS to be latitude followed by longitude (or y-x for the mathematicians around the table), so in WMS 1.3.0, you have to use:

  BBOX=lat_min, lon_min, lat_max, lon_max

However, for most projected coordinate systems, EPSG still defines the axis order as x followed by y, so nothing changes between 1.1.1 and 1.3.0 in those cases. For instance, with EPSG:3857 (Google Mercator projection in meters), the BBOX coordinate order remains the same for both WMS 1.1.1 and 1.3.0:

  BBOX=xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax

This strict compliance requirement imposed by the ISO review process on the OGC RWG means that WMS 1.3.0 server and client code needs to be aware of the axis order for each SRS that it supports and to use the correct coordinate order in its BBOX (and also the BoundingBox elements of the GetCapabilities output IIRC)... that's the mess I was alluding to. (There are a few thousand codes in the EPSG database that software needs to be made aware of.)

The issues that we encounter the most often with WMS 1.3.0 implementation range from incomplete axis order support for some EPSG codes to some implementations incorrectly assuming that WMS 1.3.0 just swaps the axis order to y-x for every SRS. And yes, there are still some implementations in 2012 that don't get this right.

Note that to help work around this issue for those writing simple clients/servers who want to avoid using EPSG codes and be free to continue with x-y axis order everywhere, the WMS 1.3.0 RWG invented a new "CRS:*" namespace for projection codes in which it defined a few well-known coordinate systems. They are listed in Annex B of the WMS 1.3.0 spec. The most common one is CRS:84 which is essentially EPSG:4326 with lon-lat (x-y) axis ordering. Unfortunately this is just a patch and doesn't address the core issue which is a brutal incompatibility between WMS 1.1.1 and 1.3.0.

Examples

 

Since MapServer complies with all those requirements, here are some example showing the change in behaviors between WMS 1.1.1 and 1.3.0 with MapServer WMS, taking the following BBOX:

  bbox=-90,0,0,90

Using WMS 1.3.0 with EPSG:4326 (with lat-lon, a.k.a y-x axis order):

  bbox=-90,0,0,90&crs=EPSG:4326&version=1.3.0

this bbox is interpreted as

  lat_min = 90 South 
  lon_min = 0
  lat_max = 0
  lon_max = 90 East

and you get the following map image:

 However, if you want to keep it simple and stick to x-y axis ordering, and want the BBOX treated as

  lon_min = 90 West
  lat_min = 0 
  lon_max = 0
  lat_max = 90 North

then you can either use WMS 1.3.0 with CRS:84:

  bbox=-90,0,0,90&crs=CRS:84&version=1.3.0

Or stick to WMS 1.1.1 with EPSG:4326:

  bbox=-90,0,0,90&srs=EPSG:4326&version=1.1.1

and in both cases you'll get this:

Hopefully now you'll understand next time you hear me mumble "... stick to WMS 1.1.1...".

P.S. Also note in the examples above that the WMS 1.1.1 "srs=..." parameter was renamed to "crs=..." in WMS 1.3.0, but that's a story for another day.

Mapgears continues its growth and launches Mapgears Solutions

(Version française)

Mapgears and Mgeospatial just announced the merge of their respective geospatial consulting operations to launch a new division: Mapgears Solutions. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we welcome two new members in the Mapgears family: Simon Mercier and Charles-Éric Bourget.

Technically, the new entity will be based in Quebec City and will operate under the direction of Simon Mercier, vice president of the new Mapgears Solutions division. Its mission will be to complement the technology offer of the current team based in Chicoutimi with highly specialized consulting services to assist customers in the setup and deployment of MapServer and related open source technologies.

Simon founded Mgeospatial a little over a year ago based on this same vision that will remain at the core of Mapgears Solutions. With respect to the current Mapgears team that you all know, we will now refer to it as Mapgears Technologies, and as the name says, it will continue to focus on the development and support of MapServer and related technologies, which is what we do best and has led us to where we are today.

I am very glad that Simon accepted the opportunity to join Mapgears. The synergy between the two teams will allow us to better serve our clients and to accelerate the growth of the two entities who were having a hard time responding to the growing demand for our technologies and services. I already expect a few more names to join the teams in the coming months, stay tuned.

BTW, Simon, Julien and I will be at FOSS4G-NA in Washington next week and we'll be happy to discuss this further with you.

P.S. With this announcement comes the need for a new website to better reflect today's Mapgears product and services offering. A preview of the new style is already available at www.mapgears.com and the new site currently under construction should hopefully be available in the coming weeks.

FOSS4G North America only 2 weeks away - April 10-11

FOSS4G North America 2012 is only two weeks away - April 10-12 in Washington, DC. Mapgears is a proud sponsor of the event and I'll be there of course!

The program of the first two days (April 10-11) includes 51 talks from presenters ranging from hardcore developers to visionary managers and technology architects, and four keynote speakers: Josh Berkus of PostgreSQL, Michael Byrne from the FCC, Paul Ramsey from OpenGeo and Keith Barber, from the NGA.

The third day (April 12) is Sponsor Day, with a Code Sprint taking place in parallel.

Online registration is open until April 2nd. Hurry up if you haven't registered yet as space is limited to 400 participants. More information is available on the foss4g-na.org website.

As for any FOSS4G event, the most important part for me is the networking with other developers and users of OSGeo software, so I look forward to seeing you there!

MapServer and TinyOWS Releases at the Islandwood OSGeo Sprint

This week, 21 developers are getting together for a code sprint in the wonderful venue of Islandwood to work on the advancement of their respective OSGeo projects. Thanks to Michael Gerlek for organizing and to our sponsors for their support.

I am happy to report that TinyOWS version 1.0 has just been released. Congratulations to Olivier Courtin for leading the project to this important milestone!

Last summer it was decided that TinyOWS (RFC-70) and MapCache (RFC-71) would join the MapServer project. This means that with the upcoming MapServer 6.2 release, we will also release the MapServer Suite which includes "mapserv" (the CGI/FastCGI), MapScript, MapCache and TinyOWS. The long term plan is to provide a more seamless integration of the tools under this MapServer Suite umbrella, while still allowing the use of each component independently or with other non-MapServer packages for those who wish to do so.

Another outcome of the sprint is that the TinyOWS documentation has been integrated in the development tree here. Thanks to David and Hal, for their work on this and their other contributions.

On the MapServer front, we just announced the release of version 6.0.2 and 5.6.8. There are no new features in those releases, only fixes, and they do include a fix for a security vulnerability that was found in the handling of WFS Filters inside SLDs, so you are encouraged to upgrade your installation. More details in the announcement here.

Finally, one of our next goals is to work out a plan for a MapServer 6.2 feature freeze and release this spring.

Intellectual Property vs Copyright

In the past I have often used the terms Intellectual Property and Copyright to mean essentially the same thing, without realizing that this was incorrect. Maybe that was because English is not my native language, but probably not since I have actually heard several others making the same mistake as well.

This morning in a discussion on this topic on the OSGeo Incubator mailing list, Frank Warmerdam explained the difference between the two terms and now I better understand why the terms Intellectual Property and Copyright should not be confused, especially in the context of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

I thought I'd share a copy of Frank's great explanation here in case it helps others better understand the distinction:

Daniel,

I believe the rationale behind avoiding the term Intellectual Property
has two parts.

First, it attempts to conflate a variety of very different legal mechanisms.
Primarily copyright, patents and trademarks.  Giving them all one name makes
it harder to separate out things we might agree with (copyright) from things
we might not (ie. Patents).

Second, it expresses these legal mechanisms in a manner that implies that
they are some sort of fundamental or manifest right rather than limited
government granted monopolies intended to serve specific needs of society

[...]

You can read the full email and the rest of the thread here.

Time to Register for the February 2012 OSGeo Code Sprint

The 2012 OSGeo Code Sprint is approaching fast: February 5-9, 2012 at IslandWood (near Seattle). I will be there to work on MapServer and am already looking forward to spending some quality time there with other OSGeo developers and contributors.

Please don't wait and register now! Space is limited, and early registrations also help with the planning of the event. You will have a unique chance to work with others on your OSGeo projects and to interact with key developers from other projects. All in the woods on a small island in the Puget Sound.

If you've been to one of the previous editions in Toronto (2009), New-York (2010) and/or Montreal (2011) then you already know how productive those meetings are, if not then I invite you to read my summary of the 2011 Montreal Code Sprint.

For more information or to register please visit the wiki page, or email our host, Michael Gerlek, directly at mpg@flaxen.com.

I signed up already. Have you?

The Mapgears team is growing!

(Version Française)

I am very excited to welcome Jessica Lapointe and Vincent Foley who just joined the Mapgears team in the last few weeks. This influx of new blood aims at increasing our ability to respond to the growing demand for MapServer and related open source technologies of course, but for Mapgears, this is also (and mostly) an investment to insure that we can continue to innovate and revolutionize the field of mobile and web mapping for years to come.

Jessica is an entrepreneur. Despite her young age, she already shines at the international level (just like Mapgears!) with her font production business: CuttyFruty.com. She developed her interest for font sets when she was 13, and today, her fonts are being used by big names such as Lise Wathier, Barbie, Microsoft and Rihanna. (Read more here.)

Even if her first start-up was very artsy, Jessica also has a passion for software and web development, and she actually won some prizes in that field. She is in the process of completing a bachelor's degree in computer science, and it is as a software developer that she joins our team. I am already looking forward to what her exceptional combination of artistic and programming skills will bring to the web mapping world.

With respect to Vincent, he combines experience in web development with a solid knowledge of Linux and the set of software development tools used by MapServer and several other OSGeo technologies. As part of our team, he will be working at the lower level of the architecture on the server side, the less visible, but no less critical part of the web mapping stack.

The users of Ubuntu GIS will have a chance to appreciate his contributions fairly soon as he is currently working with Alan to port the OSGeo UbuntuGIS packages to Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric). Stay tuned!

Welcome once again to our two solid recruits!

Obligations related to open source software licenses

A question that I hear often is whether open source software can be used in a proprietary (closed source) application. The answer is "it depends": it depends on the license of the open source components that you use and how the components are being used in your application.

This question came up again today on the gdal-dev discussion list, and Even Rouault posted an answer that summarizes very well the obligations related to the most common licenses in our field: GPL, LGPL, BSD and MIT/X11.

I reproduce Even's answer here for reference as a starting point for next time someone asks:

... here's my understanding of the obligations of the licences. Take it with a
grain of salt : "I'm not a lawyer".

* If your application links to a GPL library, the whole application, including
your own code, is bound by the GPL. You must include the appropriate copyright
notice for the library and provide the user access to the source code of the GPL
library (including the modifications you may have done) and to the code of your
application too under the terms of the GPL.

* If your application links to a LGPL library, you must include the appropriate
copyright notice for the library and provide the user access to the source code
of the LGPL library (including the modifications you may have done in it). Your
application itself may be released under the terms you like.

* If your application links to a BSD library, well, that's depend of the BSD
licence. There are 2-clause, 3-clause and 4-clause variants of the BSD
licence... If it includes the following clause "Redistributions in binary form
must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with
the distribution", well just comply with it. Otherwise, if you don't distribute
any source code (and you don't have to), you have nothing to do. In any case,
the licence only covers the library code, not your application.

* The MIT licence is a bit similar, except that, the general understanding is
that it places no obligations if you distribute the library as a binary object.
But I've always found that the term "the Software" in the licence isn't very
explicit if it only covers only the source code or binaries generated from it.
So it might be nice to include the copyright notice somewhere if you distribute
it as a binary. If you distribute it as source code, it's clear that you must
include the copyright notice.

News from the Montreal OSGeo Code Sprint

This week, Montreal was the host of OSGeo's 2011 Code Sprint where 29 OSGeo project developers and contributors from North America and Europe spent four intensive days working and meeting face to face for the advancement of their respective projects.

This year's sprint included teams working on the following projects: MapServer, GDAL/OGR, PostGIS, libLAS, ZOO Project, TinyOWS and GeoPrisma. In addition to the actual coding and project meetings, those sprints provide a unique way to build and maintain synergies between the projects and their developers.

On the MapServer front, the focus was on the 6.0 release. MapServer 6.0.0-beta2 should be released later this afternoon with the outcome of the sprint work.

Ruby bindings for MapServer and GDAL were brought back into maintenance, and some enhancements were made to the Oracle (OCI) driver in OGR.

The LibLAS group has been planning and setting up the bases of the new libPC (PC for Point Cloud), which will provide a generic interface to point cloud data formats. Think of libPC as the GDAL of point clouds.

The PostGIS team moved closer to the PostGIS 2.0 release with core changes to indexes, better support for raster map algebra, and several tickets closed on shp2pgsql.

The ZOO Project team worked on a new WPS service for athmospheric dispersion to simulate the dispersion of the cloud that spreads from the Japanese nuclear power plants. The team also made some good progress (testing and docs) towards the upcoming ZOO 1.2 release.

A MapServer mapfile parser has been added to TinyOWS to directly read the layer configuration information from a MapServer mapfile. This addition will significantly facilitate the use of TinyOWS as a WFS-T to complement MapServer. 

The GeoPrisma team got together to add support for two new service types (OGC WFS and WPS), as well as fixes to the print widget and some general security issues. They also started to build demos integrating the latest version of most projects present at the sprint including: MapServer, TinyOWS (with mapfile support), GeoPrisma, Zoo-Project and WKTRaster. Stay tuned to see this demo in action (link not available yet).

And of course there was the social side of the program, with a hockey night on Thursday, and hours of talk and lots of new ideas exchanged informally during the social events each night. 

Part of the group also went for a hike to the top of Mont-Royal to enjoy the view from the top of Montreal Island:

Once again, thank you to our sponsors and to our host for making this event possible, and to all the participants who made this a success.

Finally, there are already talks about the 2012 Code Sprint which is likely going to take place in Seattle (see here).

P.S. More pictures from the sprint are available on flickr.

OSGeo Montreal Code Sprint seeking more sponsors due to record participation

Update 1 (2011-03-04): Tydac just signed up for a 750$ sponsorship. Thank you for your support!

Update 2 (2011-03-07): I am glad to announce two more 750$ sponsors: Applied Imagery and Neogeo Technologies! Thanks!

The Montreal Code Sprint of March 15-18, 2011 has reached a record of 29 registered participants from 9 open source projects as of yesterday. This is awesome news for OSGeo and its projects that will get a significant boost of code and contributions during that week!

The downside of this is that our initial budget was for ~20 participants, and with close to 50% more sprinters we need to adjust the budget accordingly and are turning to you to help us find more sponsors to balance the new budget.

CALL FOR NEW SPONSORS - An investment in the technology that you use!

We are looking for another round of sponsors ($750 each) to support food and fun for the sprinters as they work hard and play hard for four productive days. Each $750 sponsorship will be put towards lunch, snacks and dinner costs for the sprinters, and any surplus at the end of the event will be turned over to OSGeo or used for a future code sprint.

If your organization is using one of the software projects listed below, then please consider this call for sponsorship as an investment in the technology that you use and contact me at dmorissette@mapgears.com to confirm your sponsorship. In addition to visibility in our public announcements you will get recognition for your contribution from the developers and from the OSGeo community.

Please also keep in mind that all the participants are volunteering several days of their time in addition to paying for their own travel and hotel expenses.

More information about this event is available here. The Open Source projects currently represented are:

• MapServer 
• GDAL/OGR 
• PostGIS 
• libLAS 
• ZOO Project 
• TinyOWS 
• GeoPrisma 
• OpenLayers 
• GeoExt.

Thank you once again to our current sponsors:

750$ Sponsors
Hockey Night Sponsor	Host (Room and Internet)

Please do not hesitate to forward this announcement in your respective channels.

OSGeo's Montreal Code Sprint 2011 - Only two weeks away!

(Version française)

Yes, time is flying! It's only two weeks away! All the pieces are coming together smoothly for a very exciting OSGeo Code Sprint in Montreal the week of March 15 to 18, 2011.

As I am writing this, 27 OSGeo project developers and contributors from North America and Europe have signed up to meet and work on MapServer, GDAL/OGR, PostGIS, libLAS, ZOO Project, TinyOWS, GeoPrisma, OpenLayers and GeoExt.

Most of the attendees are from the C Tribe this year, and unfortunately the Java and JavaScript Tribes are essentially missing after making a great presence last year. Come on guys, it's been great to sprint with you last year and we'd like to have you back!

Thank you to our sponsors who are supporting food and fun for the sprinters as they work hard and play hard for four productive days:

• LizardTech
• Azavea
• qPublic
• Farallon Geographics
• Airborne Interactive
• Boreal - Information Strategies (Borealis)
• Gateway Geomatics

(Note: There is always room for more sponsors. If you are interested please see the details here and contact me at dmorissette at mapgears.com)

And also big thanks to the Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) for hosting us in their wonderful conference room and providing internet access for free. I'm sure the sprinters will appreciate the view of the city from the 24th floor!

Finally, there is still room for a couple more sprinters. We only ask that you be knowledgeable and willing to get your hands dirty working for one of the projects that is represented. If you plan on participating then hurry up, visit the wiki page to get all the information and make sure you add your name to the list of participants in the wiki and join the "tosprint" mailing list to get the latest updates!

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!

Looking for venue in Montreal for OSGeo Code Sprint 2011

(Version française)

We are currently looking for a venue in Montreal, located within walking distance of hotels and restaurant, for the organization of OSGeo's Montreal Code Sprint 2011.

This will be OSGeo's third North-American Code Sprint. Each year, over 20 OSGeo project developers and contributors meet for 4 days to work face to face on advancing their software projects. The first North-American sprint took place in Toronto in March 2009, the second was in New-York in February 2010, and it will be in Montréal for 2011.

Here is what we are looking for:

• Room(s) with working space (tables and chairs) to comfortably accommodate between 20 and 40 developers. Everyone brings their own laptop, so no computer/workstation is required
• Fast and reliable Internet connection
• Availability for 4 consecutive days over a weekend, sometimes between January and March 2011 (e.g. Friday to Monday, Saturday to Tuesday, etc.)
• Location within walking distance of restaurants and hotels, and easy to get to from the airport by shuttle or taxi since several participants will be flying in.

If you know of a company, organization, university or college with space that could suit our needs, then please contact me with all the information via email at dmorissette@mapgears.com. Even if you are not 100% sure about the availability of a given option, please do not hesitate to forward your suggestion with a contact name as soon as possible so that we can consider it in our planning.

We can offer visibility or pay a reasonable fee in exchange for the use of the space.

Please forward this request through your network of contacts...

Thank you in advance!

MapServer security audits and security releases

(Version française)

This morning, MapServer 5.6.4 and 4.10.6 have been released with some important security fixes. Even if we are not aware of any exploit for the issues, all users are strongly advised to upgrade. All the details are available in the release announcement.

In the last couple of years, MapServer has started to attract the attention of security-aware organizations who have performed audits of the source code. These audits sometimes lead to potential vulnerability reports and security releases like what happened this morning, but there is more to this...

I like to think of the increasing number of MapServer source code audits as a good thing for a few reasons:

• First this confirms that MapServer has hit the critical mass required to attract the attention of groups large enough to afford security audits. It's always good to hear that your software is widely used and getting attention from the Big Guys.
• Thanks to MapServer's open source nature, security experts can perform quality assurance on its source code and share their findings and recommendations with us, this of course leads to better software for the users, but also means that we as developers can learn a lot from their reports and get better at writing secure code over time.
• All this comes at no direct cost for us. That's open source at its best: those audits are contributions to the project by the users themselves.

In the end, MapServer wins by becoming more robust and secure, and we as developers get to improve our skills and to learn from security experts. That all sounds great to me!

P.S. In addition to the potential vulnerability fixes that were released this morning, the last security audit report that we received also contained some more general recommendations that we will be working on in the next few weeks. So you can expect that MapServer 6.0 will be an even more secure release!

Rendez-vous OSGeo Quebec 2010 is less than a week away!

(Version française)

It is with great pleasure that I remind you all that the Rendez-vous OSGeo-Québec is less than a week away!

It is next week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 15-16, that I will have the opportunity to welcome you in Saguenay, my home town! This means that you only have a few days left to register online at http://rendez-vous-osgeo-qc.org/2010/inscription/ ... and be part part of two exciting and memorable days where free and open source geospatial software will be at the center of all discussions, and you will have the chance to hear and chat with some of the key players of OSGeo in North America, and even some from as far as France!

All the details of our program are available online at http://rendez-vous-osgeo-qc.org/2010/programme/

In addition to the international and local conference program, in the OSGeo fashion, social/networking activities are planned for each night, including an ice breaker ("5 à 7") on Tuesday, and a boat cruise on the Saguenay Fjord on Wednesday in collaboration with Vision Geomatique, another GIS event that will take place right after at the same location.

Looking forward to meeting you on Tuesday!

Rendez-vous OSGeo-Qc is starting to take shape!

(Version Française)

With the publication of its impressive conference program last week, the June 15-16 Rendez-vous OSGeo-Québec is really starting to take shape. The response to the call for presentations that ended on April 15th has been amazing, and what was only a great idea 6 months ago is now turning into an memorable and very exciting event!

On the program:

• 5 invited speakers who will talk about the OSGeo Foundation, its international activities and its software projects
• Representatives from OSGeo's Francophone local chapter will talk about its activities
• 21 local talks grouped under the following themes in relation with Free and Open Source Geomatics:
• Use cases
• Introduction
• Business
• Education
• Technologies
• A discussion about the launch of an open geospatial data project in Quebec

And of course the social and networking part:

• An OSGeo "5 à 7" (ice breaker) on the Tuesday night
• A boat cruise on the Saguenay Fjord on the Wednesday night, in collaboration with Vision Géomatique.

Registrations have already started to come in, and I take this opportunity to remind you that the early bird rate (25% discount) ends in 3 days, that is on Friday April 30th. Go ahead and register now by visiting http://rendez-vous-osgeo-qc.org/2010/inscription/ (The registration page is in French, if you need help, please do not hesitate to contact me directly via email)

Finally, I would like to extend big thanks to our first round of partners who make this event possible. Their support is not only financial, it is also moral. They are listed at: http://rendez-vous-osgeo-qc.org/2010/partenaires/

Looking forward to seeing you in June!

ESRI publishes its position on open source software

(Version française)

I just found out that ESRI has published an official position on open source software on its website at http://esri.com/opensource that sounds quite encouraging. (Thanks to Chaipat Nengcomma's blog post that I could not read but that hinted me to this.)

There is also an interesting podcast where Victoria Kouyoumjian (ESRI IT strategy architect) "discusses ESRI’s position on open source and the importance of open source software in GIS application development" (quoting their own summary).

We already knew that ESRI had been using GDAL for some time, had integrated support for PostGIS in SDE more recently and even sponsored FOSS4G 2007, but to find an official statement of their position is definitely encouraging. I even dare to dream of collaboration between ESRI people and other OSGeo projects in the not too distant future (gotta be optimistic).

I know (for having been through this myself a few years ago) that ESRI has not always had only good words for people who made the choice of open source software for their projects in the past. Let's hope this position is sincere and will propagate across the whole organisation, and that things will really change and lead to a spirit of real collaboration, for the benefit of all the neo-geographers who want the best of both worlds.

OSGeo4W and MapServer Translations

(Version française)

I am very happy to notice a flurry of translation work going on around the OSGeo4W and MapServer projects recently!

On the MapServer front, Lars Lingner started a German translation of the website about a year ago, which led to some work on the website structure to support multiple languages, and a first release of the German translation on the mapserver.org website a few weeks ago.

Since then, Eduin Carillo and Juanma M. R. have started with the Spanish translation, and a few days ago, Yves Jacolin volunteered to work on the French translation. I should add that Yves already offers a good number of French translations through his website for MapServer, GDAL, QGIS, GRASS, etc. The Spanish and French versions of the MapServer website are not published yet, but we can expect them to go live in the near future.

On the OSGeo4W front, the translation effort started with a Japanese translation of the installer by Jeff McKenna and a team of partners in Japan. This required a good amount of ground work to allow support for multiple languages in the installer and the website, and now that the bases are there with the Japanese translation, Yves Jacolin just showed up again to drop some French bits.

Thanks to all the translation contributors for their hard work. If you are interested in contributing to those translation efforts please do not hesitate to join the fun, here are some guidelines for MapServer and for OSGeo4W. In all cases, the developers list of your favorite project is the best place to share your intentions and/or ask for help getting started.

Update: Thomas Gratier just announced on mapserver-dev his plan to contribute to the French translation of MapServer docs. Merci Thomas!

Interopera-sprint-ability

Interopera-sprint-ability:

(noun) A property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate) in a sprint environment.

We had a great example of this today at the NYC Code Sprint when members of the GeoServer, MapServer and OpenLayers teams worked together on the simple (but cool) addition of a vendor-specific ANGLE GetMap parameter in MapServer and GeoServer's respective WMS interfaces, and used OpenLayers to test the new feature.

The result, a few minutes later, was this:

... a rotated map of Canada (MapServer) and USA (GeoServer), served through WMS in OpenLayers.

Here are the proud members of this interopera-sprint-ability experiment: myself for MapServer to the left, Andrea Aime for GeoServer to the right and Andreas Hocevar driving the OpenLayers client:

NYC Code Sprint Update #1

As the great reporter that he is, Paul wrote up great summaries of Day 0 and Day 1 of the New York Code Sprint.

In addition to the MapServer 6.0 release plan discussions (brainstorming) that he already mentioned, I have been involved in several discussions here and there about MapServer and GDAL/OGR.

One of the main coding tasks for me yesterday was the extraction of the OGRSpatialReference code from GDAL/OGR into a standalone libOSR package that currently sits in a sandbox in GDAL's SVN repository. This libOSR package will be useful to libLAS, PostGIS, and other packages that need SRS conversion utilities but don't want to carry a complete copy of the GDAL library.

On the menu for me today: some experiments to support on-the-fly conversion of XML mapfiles to text mapfiles inside MapServer using the XSLT, and then possibly start looking into SVG symbol support.