Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Proprietary GIS on our OSGeo website

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I just got off the phone with a client that is interested in migrating 
to open source tools. They problem is they don't know where to start. 
They know what proprietary tools they are using, they know what features 
they are using, they know about OSGeo, but rapidly get lost in all the 
projects and what they do and how they might be used to replace what 
they have.


They need :
* a simple mapping from proprietary to FOSS tools, so they can start 
learn more about which tools to investigate.
* simple recipes and direction to get them started, ie: lower the cost 
of entrance.
* list of resources, like mailing lists, where to download, what 
tutorials and/books are available or experts in the various tools they 
are interested.


We need to make this easy for people that are not familiar with FOSS to 
easily find their way into our community. They want to educate 
themselves a little before engaging the community.


I often act as a compass and help guide them to get started, but I only 
know part of the pie.


So migration guides would be good. Some form of mapping products to 
projects would be very useful.


I like the format of Choose Open Source and I think it covers a lot of 
these needs.


-Steve

On 9/21/2017 3:00 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:
Thanks that is a great example - this is the roll I hope that 
http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/choose-a-project/ 
 will play (now that 
is actually working correctly).


I am happy to try an experiment and see if this is sufficient, I just do 
not want to lose track of the vision that we are helping non-community 
members connect with open source.


I am sorry this discussion started over links, which look to of been 
added to the beta website by mistake. I do not mind naming competitor 
products, in case studies, migration guides, or "even" on project pages. 
In the case of project pages it is up to each project steering committee 
what they want to do.



--
Jody Garnett

On 21 September 2017 at 08:45, Daniel Kastl > wrote:


I think "Switch2osm" is a very good example how to help migrating to
non-proprietary tools: https://switch2osm.org/
I quickly went through their site and as far as I could see,
competitor names only appear in case studies.
Maybe we could have "switch2foss" in a similar way.

It's a very good idea to help new users to find open alternatives to
the proprietary software they're using right now.
I agree with many here, that this doesn't require to provide links
to them.

Best regards,
Daniel





On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Gert-Jan van der Weijden (OSGeo.nl)
> wrote:

As a regular user of proprietary GIS software (ArcGIS, FME,
Oracle Spatial etcetera) I can assure that it is very valuable
to have some sort of guidance in the diversity of the FOSS
landscape.

I agree that "similar proprietary products" isn't the right
label. However, instead of the proposed "migratte from" (which
sound like a complete migration plan) I'd suggest the label
"comparable proprietary software".

Kind regards,

Gert-Jan



María Arias de Reyna schreef op 21-09-2017 8:30:

On 20 September 2017 at 02:41, Helmut Kudrnovsky
> wrote:


Dear OSGeo community

I want to bring you a discussion on a github
ticket about linking to
"similar proprietary products" [1] to your
attention.

My comment there:

"I support and concur with Venka that the item
"Similar Proprietary
Products" should be removed. There isn't only
one proprietary GIS software
out there, there are several others. IMHO such
comparisons may be part of
e.g. a reviewed scientific paper/elaboration,
where our OSGeo projects - if
they want to - may link to. I see no added value
for OSGeo to serve such
links. As already elsewhere mentioned by me,
reciprocity is the key if such
items are listed, but I can't see this happen. "

I'm pretty much convinced that more effort to
help our OSGeo projects
improving on every level (e.g. documentation,
reach out, testing, etc) is
the key rather than linking to proprietary
software. One of such

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Mentors money

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Really, that is news to me. I never knew we had that option. I think we 
would have liked to fund some additional development for the project or 
defrayed travel expenses for PSC members to go to conferences to present 
papers on behalf of the project.


What is the process for mentors to get the money?

Thanks,
  -Steve

On 8/28/2017 9:36 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:
Mentors can decide what to do with the money they earn through the GSOC 
program; in the past many mentors have accepted the t-shirt and donated 
the money to OSGeo. I know I donated money to OSGeo previously, but was 
not really specific about to any particular project.


--
Jody Garnett

On 28 August 2017 at 17:23, Vicky Vergara > wrote:


So, then if I undertand correctly:
Mentors money is not mentors money.
Right?

Vicky


On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 2:03 PM, Jody Garnett
> wrote:

We are listing GSOC as a initiative, can the participating
mentors make a decision?

I have suggestions (such as a donate to the travel grant program
for student travel) but it should be up to the participants.

On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 10:11 AM Massimiliano Cannata
> wrote:

I believe that GSoC people should make a proposal to be
discussed at board level, of course hints from everyone is
welcome...

Maxi

Il 26 ago 2017 7:02 PM, "Marc Vloemans"
>
ha scritto:

Dear Vicky,

Before going into your question; decisions to spend
money on codesprints or student conference attendance
has not been part of the Marketing Committee remit.

Perhaps the Board can decide on the what/where/how of
this type of support?

Kind regards,
Marc Vloemans


Op 26 aug. 2017 om 18:51 heeft Vicky Vergara
> het
volgende geschreven:



​
Hello all
This thread started on the osgeo mentors list.
By suggestion of Margherita I tried to move it to
marketing, but it never arrived, so I am sending to
discuss..
Sorry I can not give you links to the different
responses, it so happens that OSGeo google mentors
mailing list is private (for what ever reason).

Please have a look.




-- Forwarded message --
From: *Margherita Di Leo* >
Date: Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [OSGeo GSoC Mentors] Hello all
To: osgeo-gsoc-ment...@googlegroups.com



Dear Vicky, Maxi, all,

The money that OSGeo gets from Google is this year
500USD per student. Before i was admin and also before
i acted as a mentor, this matter was discussed among
the mentors at the time, whether to distribute the
money among the mentors or to destinate them to
another use, being this decision up to the
organizations participating in gsoc. As far as i can
tell, the problem of distributing the money to the
mentors was to make a lot of small payments of which a
considerable part would be eaten by bank transfers and
currency changes. So it was agreed that the whole sum
should be used to support code sprints instead.
Now, if you guys think this should be discussed over
again, you're welcome, but this would apply to next
year's budget, and should be agreed upon by all mentors.
My personal opinion: I think it more useful to use the
budget for a common purpose rather than distributing
it in small amounts, for example if you don't like it
destinated to code sprints, would be to use it for
financial support for students to attend conferences.
For example at fosdem we have been organizing the
geospatial session and i have every year invited our
gsoc students to present their works but they couldn't
afford the travel and accommodation.
Google also gives 500USD for supporting students
travel to conferences, you mentors will be 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Mentors money

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think at the least we might want to consider giving that money or some 
of it back to the project that did the mentoring and let them decide how 
to use it with some guidelines on use. OSGeo as the sponsoring 
organization should probably get some of it to defray effort of organizing.


Just my 2 cents, after mentoring 8+ students.

-Steve


On 8/28/2017 8:23 PM, Vicky Vergara wrote:

So, then if I undertand correctly:
Mentors money is not mentors money.
Right?

Vicky


On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 2:03 PM, Jody Garnett > wrote:


We are listing GSOC as a initiative, can the participating mentors
make a decision?

I have suggestions (such as a donate to the travel grant program for
student travel) but it should be up to the participants.

On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 10:11 AM Massimiliano Cannata
> wrote:

I believe that GSoC people should make a proposal to be
discussed at board level, of course hints from everyone is
welcome...

Maxi

Il 26 ago 2017 7:02 PM, "Marc Vloemans" > ha scritto:

Dear Vicky,

Before going into your question; decisions to spend money on
codesprints or student conference attendance has not been
part of the Marketing Committee remit.

Perhaps the Board can decide on the what/where/how of this
type of support?

Kind regards,
Marc Vloemans


Op 26 aug. 2017 om 18:51 heeft Vicky Vergara
> het
volgende geschreven:



​
Hello all
This thread started on the osgeo mentors list.
By suggestion of Margherita I tried to move it to
marketing, but it never arrived, so I am sending to discuss..
Sorry I can not give you links to the different responses,
it so happens that OSGeo google mentors mailing list is
private (for what ever reason).

Please have a look.




-- Forwarded message --
From: *Margherita Di Leo* >
Date: Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [OSGeo GSoC Mentors] Hello all
To: osgeo-gsoc-ment...@googlegroups.com



Dear Vicky, Maxi, all,

The money that OSGeo gets from Google is this year 500USD
per student. Before i was admin and also before i acted as
a mentor, this matter was discussed among the mentors at
the time, whether to distribute the money among the
mentors or to destinate them to another use, being this
decision up to the organizations participating in gsoc. As
far as i can tell, the problem of distributing the money
to the mentors was to make a lot of small payments of
which a considerable part would be eaten by bank transfers
and currency changes. So it was agreed that the whole sum
should be used to support code sprints instead.
Now, if you guys think this should be discussed over
again, you're welcome, but this would apply to next year's
budget, and should be agreed upon by all mentors.
My personal opinion: I think it more useful to use the
budget for a common purpose rather than distributing it in
small amounts, for example if you don't like it destinated
to code sprints, would be to use it for financial support
for students to attend conferences. For example at fosdem
we have been organizing the geospatial session and i have
every year invited our gsoc students to present their
works but they couldn't afford the travel and accommodation.
Google also gives 500USD for supporting students travel to
conferences, you mentors will be asked to propose a name
of a deserving gsoc student and an event that he or she
would like to attend and in case of multiple names we will
either split the aid or choose among the students. Last
year if I remember correctly this call was made directly
to mentors by google to provide names to them of deserving
students, but i'm not aware if anyone of osgeo made the
request or got funded.
Back to your specific request, Vicky, I suggest you
address this to the osgeo marketing committee , that is
administering osgeo's budget, and they should be able to
give you an answer.

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] tiling alternative

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 6/14/2017 4:47 PM, Eduardo Kanegae wrote:

hi there,

I have the need for maps on hosted platforms without mapserver. I'm 
thinking in use Leaflet and tilesets (PNG for transparency) for that.


What would be a practical to do that locally? (under an OSGeo Live 
workstation)


MapNik? MapProxy? or should I try MapCache because my source services is 
under MapServer/WMS?


I've been using mapcache for years and it is great. Easy to setup, never 
had any maintenance issues related to it, it is fast and does not 
consume a lot of resources. It supports a lot of tile caches and 
physical tile cache structures, lots of tile protocols, but requires WMS 
for source data. If you are using apache I highly recommend it.


-Steve W

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Population statistics in GIS Softwares

[Stephen Woodbridge]

You can get all the Ceneus polygon areas that they report statistics 
about here:


ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2016/

ZCTA5 - Zip code tabulation areas
BG - block groups
etc

There is good documention. If you loade these into postgis, then you can 
dos a simple query like:


select * from  where st_intersects(geom, 
st_setsrid(st_makepoint(long, lat),4326);


Also PostGIS has a Tiger geocoder and you could load that up, and then 
query to your hearts content.


-Steve W


On 6/3/2017 1:04 PM, Parv Aggarwal wrote:

Hi all,

I know the census geocoder can get lat/long and FIPS codes, up til 1000 
entries… 1) what’s the best free alternative for over 1000 entries which 
still preserves data privacy? 2) what’s the best way to batch 
map/convert FIPS codes to zip codes or vice versa? I need to create an 
equivalency to  be able to simultaneously view census and our own 
population data.


Sincerely

Parv

*From:* Parv Aggarwal
*Sent:* Monday, May 22, 2017 11:59 AM
*To:* 'discuss@lists.osgeo.org' 
*Subject:* Population statistics in GIS Softwares

Hi QGIS Community,

I’m Parv, an analytics intern at the Latino Community Credit Union here 
in North Carolina. I’m tasked with finding and using GIS software to 
visualize both US Census data and our membership data at micro levels to 
determine best locations for expansions. As per my instructions, this 
means being able to:


-Visualize Hispanic or Latino population by smaller units than zip 
codes.  We have worked with Census tracts in the past and that is ideal, 
but there are even smaller areas with population data, like census 
blocks.  If we can see in a map where the higher number of Latinos live 
and also see the streets so that we can imagine potential locations and 
draw areas around them, we could identify optimal locations.


-If we get a proposal for a location, for example a realtor contacts us 
and says “I have a great place for rent at 1309 Cúcuta Dr,” we should be 
able to enter the address in the software and define an area around it, 
draw that area and know how many Latinos live there.  The areas could be 
circles, free shape forms, circles cut by major highways or barriers we 
would think people wouldn’t cross…


-Of course we should be able to add our own data to the software, like 
those addresses of our current members, and be able to look at, say, 
total balances of members who live in a defined area.


As we’re a non-profit, we prefer Open Source Ware over high cost ware 
like ArcGIS. I have installed QGIS and am currently exploring its 
capabilities via the user guide/training manual. I know I first have to 
do a join on census csv population data and tract or block shapefiles. 
Assuming I’m able to do that, I am trying to find relevant sections that 
would show me how to do this micro level aggregation of population data. 
I believe in ArcGIS this is called “create buffers around a point” but I 
am not sure if this is the relevant way to do it in QGIS or not. I 
searched for buffers in the training manual but I still can’t tell if it 
means the same thing or is relevant for my purposes. I’m also going 
through the vector analysis and processing sections but end up getting 
lost on what’s relevant and what’s not. I wanted to ask if QGIS was 
indeed the best suited software for this purpose or is there something 
simpler out there I should check out instead.


Sincerely

Parv



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open Technologies and Open Data in ITS

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi Suchith,

Vicky Vergara and I developed a vehicle routing problem solver as part 
of a city wide trash collection planning system that Ingesur developed 
for the city of Montevideo UY. Our repository is here:


https://github.com/woodbri/vehicle-routing-problems/tree/release-v5

This is an interesting problem because we linked ORSM into our solver 
code and used OSM data for the street network data. We worked 
extensively with Ingesur and they were an excellent partner in this 
project (I've cc'd Fernando @ Ingesur). This solver deals with many real 
world issues, like container and truck volume limits, pickup time 
windows, some trucks that can only pickup containers on the right side 
of the vehicle, trucks can not make u-turns at containers on streets, etc.


We looked at using pgRouting and OSRM for computing routes and picked 
OSRM for performance and the fact that this was easiest for the clients 
to update the street network as needed and then to reload OSM into OSRM.


We integrated the functionality in to postgresql as an extension, but I 
believe the final solution actually ended up using a command line 
interface that we used to develop the code under.


Anyway, if you have additional questions, we would be happy to address them.

Best regards,
  -Steve

On 1/17/2016 1:46 PM, Suchith Anand wrote:

This is a request for help from those who are working in Intelligent
Transport Systems area. I am currently on a secondment to Transport
Systems Catapult [1] from the University of Nottingham and as part of
my research , one aspect i am looking into is the impact of Open
Technologies and Open Data in ITS in accelerating innovation
opportunities.


I will appreciate if anyone who is working in ITS (Transport
planners, City governments) esp. using Open Technologies and Open
Data (examples from across the world are welcome )  if they can
please email  me at suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk on their project
details (if you can send me the websites of the project  or links to
various open datasets that you are using etc), it will be greatly
appreciated and very helpful for my research.

Thanks again for your kind help on this matter.


Best wishes,

Suchith


[1]  https://ts.catapult.org.uk/




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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G events - email privacy

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Has anyone looked at Salesforce.com that has offers 10 free licenses to 
NPO's as a possible CRM solution.


http://www.salesforce.com/industries/nonprofit/overview/
http://www.salesforce.org/nonprofit/
http://thirdsectorit.org/blog/the-difference-between-regular-salesforce-and-the-nonprofit-starter-pack-from-salesforce/

Just a thought ... I'm not involved in anyway with Salesforce.

-Steve

On 12/22/2015 6:16 PM, Marc Vloemans wrote:

Dear Board et al

Let me give an idea why some kind of CRM would be appropriate;
- finances are managed in a financial software environment like SAP
- code is managed in a SVN env like Trac
- collaboration is done in eg Google Docs
- relations are managed in a CRM
however none are managed in a list !

It is probably a matter of dominant perspective or mental model ; if the 
majority of a community is financially/technically/commercially in background 
it tends to approach every problem with its own unique tool set. Unless a 
hammer is the only tool available

Please let's treat the OSGeo relationship management as an important  enough 
theme. Unless outreach and promotion are not on the agenda any more. Doing 
document management in a SVN environment a little while ago was already bizar 
enough ;-)

Vriendelijke groet,
Marc Vloemans



Op 23 dec. 2015 om 02:55 heeft Sanghee Shin  het volgende 
geschreven:

Hi Steven,

I don’t think that might be another loads of managing different lists. The core 
lists are only two, previous attendees and sponsors lists, 11 lists are there 
at MailChimp.

Cheers,

신상희
---
Shin, Sanghee
Gaia3D, Inc. - The GeoSpatial Company
http://www.gaia3d.com


2015. 12. 23., 오전 12:45, Steven Feldman  작성:

Sanghee

I noticed that this conversation is taking place solely on Conference list so I 
have extended to Discussions to gain a wider range of opinion hopefully

I think it may be more work for FOSS4G LOCs and others to manage loads of 
different spreadsheet lists rather than maintaining one master database.
__
Steven



On 22 Dec 2015, at 14:55, Sanghee Shin  wrote:

Hi Steven and all,

I know MailChimp is not for the CRM. However I believe the core part of the 
customer relation management doesn’t lie on the CRM SW but on interaction with 
customers, for us it means previous FOSS4G attendees and sponsors.

As a volunteer organisation I don’t think we have enough time and resources to 
manage another CRM SW - whether that is open source or proprietary.

So, how about just focusing on giving thanks and asking participation to 
OSGeo’s activities? It will not be so frequent. I believe introducing CRM SW 
could be another overkill.

Cheers,

신상희
---
Shin, Sanghee
Gaia3D, Inc. - The GeoSpatial Company
http://www.gaia3d.com


2015. 12. 22., 오후 6:58, Steven Feldman  작성:

MailChimp is not a CRM, it’s mailing software that works of lists that you 
upload. The challenge is maintaining the lists with any degree of granularity

I agree with Darrell that a proper CRM would be a great asset allowing us to 
develop a better understanding of conference delegates, list members etc and 
deliver more tailored marketing communications to them. There are open source 
solutions that we could deploy and hosted solutions that we could purchase.

I will stick my hand up to help (emphasis on help) with implementation if we 
decide to go ahead with a CRM
__
Steven



On 22 Dec 2015, at 01:42, Sanghee Shin  wrote:

2015. 12. 22., 오전 9:35, Darrell Fuhriman  작성:


I’ve always maintained that OSGeo should maintain a CMS with sponsor contacts, 
conference attendees, etc.


We already have MailChimp account for managing previous global FOSS4G attendees 
and sponsors. It’s huge asset.


One it’s all in place, you just have to have a policy for deciding who gets 
access to what, which shouldn’t be that hard.


We may add new OSGeo sponsors there to MailChimp for managing all the thing in 
one place. And then we may set the access rule, maybe by Board?


But I was never able to get any traction on that.  *sigh*


To reduce any other additional jobs, I suggest to make the best of MailChimp as 
a platform for CRM(Customer Relation Management). I believe it’s about CRM not 
about spamming.



d.



On Dec 21, 2015, at 01:20, Sanghee Shin  wrote:

If sharing scope can be defined, that might also be nice.

For example,

1. email lists collected through global FOSS4Gs, that might be only shared to 
next global LOC.
2. email lists collected through regional FOSS4Gs, that might be only shared to 
next regional LOC.

By the way, Conference Committee, when will you add me to the conference 
committee members[1]? I have enough scars on my body to be added to your 
committee!

[1]https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Current_Members

신상희
---
Shin, Sanghee
Gaia3D, Inc. - The GeoSpatial Company
http://www.gaia3d.com



2015. 12. 20., 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Privacy Policy

[Stephen Woodbridge]

We already have the technology for lists that support all the various 
lists that we already maintain. It seems that we could create various 
new lists, like foss4g, foss4g-na, foss4g-, etc and then allow 
people to sub to these lists. Part of signing up for an event would be 
to check off if you want to opt-in to the event list for future notices. 
I would expect these lists to be closed, ie no one can post to the list 
except the authorized owners.


I think to your point Jody, some rules need to be clearly established on 
who can access which lists for what purposes.


This makes it easy to maintain the list and lets people sub or un-sub 
from one or ALL lists easily. When an event is in the planning messages 
to the various open lists like discuss could have a message posted with 
a link to opt-in to the event specific list for further information 
about the event.


-Steve

On 12/18/2015 1:44 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:

Thanks for the research, a few personal opinions inline ...

8. In our case it is not clear who is the legal owner of the address
list(s). Is an email address list of the official Dutch local
chapter OSGeo.nl also owned by OSGeo.org? This gets even more
complex on the co-operation part: e.g. is a FOSS4G-NA mailing list
owned by OSGeo, by Locationtech, by the LOC?


Because the way we have structured things it is usually the LOC handling
marketing at each event, reaching out to previous organizers and so on ...

I think of our marketing committee maintained these lists and handled
this aspect of publicity for a LOC then we could maintain continuity
across events.

As an event organizer there can be a great pressure from presenters,
sponsors, etc.. to "follow up" on what they consider to be a marketing
opportunity. The best advice I have had is to stay out of it, collect
contacts at your booth, or put your contact details up on a slide etc...

10. OSGeo doesn't have a lawyer, nor a "legal committee", I guess.


We reach out to other groups for legal advice when warranted - for
example contacting the FSF on license questions on behalf of projects in
incubation.

We do have contact with LocationTech ;-). And I suppose LocationTech
(or Eclipse) does have an more detailed view of the legal do's and
don'ts than my observations. How about asking LocationTech for a
legal advice on this issue (just the facts, no opinions please),


That would be consistent with our approach, the OSGeo board also should
have some budget towards seeking our own legal advice.

Since LocationTech is our collaborator on FOSS4GNA I think we can ask
for guidance for this event. The only question is who should ask?
Michael Smith (our representative) or Rob (event organizer).  I think I
would like to work through Rob on this one, or more accurately through
the foss4gna organizing committee.

Aside: Just as in discussing open source and open data licenses we
should keep in mind this is a public forum. So beyond saying "I am not a
lawyer" we should take care not accidentally cause harm.



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4GNA - Someone is watching you :-o

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think there is another facet of communication that is being missed and 
is probably part of the current issue. I think the OSGeo member of 
LocationTech should also be responsible for keep the OSGeo membership 
more informed about what is happening between the two organizations.


I think it is natural for our members to react defensively when 
surprised by new information that seems to be detrimental to our 
organization. Keep members more informed on a regular basis would help.


I for one do not have time to read through all the minutes of the board 
meeting and various other committee meetings and would appreciate a 
summary getting posted to Discuss.


-Steve

On 12/16/2015 2:34 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:

The board is aware of public perception and I trust it will be on the
agenda for f2f meeting.

I think we can do a bit better than a statement - in our last board
meeting Micheal Smith has volunteered to be our OSGeo representative to
LocationTech. OSGeo is a member of LocationTech and we have been remiss
in keeping communication going in an official capacity (by supplying a
representative). We can issue a press release to that effect to have a
publicly visible sign of communication/collaboration.

Thank you for reassurance on the selection process Jeroen - all three
were very strong bids.

--
Jody Garnett

On 16 December 2015 at 05:29, Jeroen Ticheler
> wrote:

Thanks Ian for this email! I fully support what you are writing. It
is very much time to stop the negative sentiments around
LocationTech, FOSS4G conference offers that had LocationTech as a
partner and so forth. Constructive collaboration is all we need
within OSGeo AND with others in the (geo-)community.

I’ve heard negative sentiments about the FOSS4G 2017 selection
process. As a member of the Conference Committee I would like to
state here that I am convinced the LocationTech issue was not as
decisive for most members as people outside the committee seem to
think. It was an aspect discussed thoroughly, as were other aspects
of the proposals.

I hope the Face to Face meeting end of January by the OSGeo board
hosted in our GeoCat office will be constructive and positive from
all angles. But at this stage I also call upon the OSGeo Board to
come forward with a statement that helps to unify the OSGeo
community and give directions. There seems to be a vacuum in the
leadership right now with Jeff’s sudden resignation that should be
filled as soon as possible.

Greetings,
Jeroen


**
**
***
*
*
*Try GeoCat*
*
*Bridge©
***
*
An extension to ArcGIS© to instantly publish data and metadata on
GeoServer, MapServer, PostGIS and GeoNetwork.
*
*
See http://geocat.net  for more details.
*

Jeroen Ticheler
GeoCat bv
Veenderweg 13
6721 WD Bennekom
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)6 81286572 
http://geocat.net




On 16 dec. 2015, at 12:29, Ian Edwards > wrote:

/"there seems to be a fairly strident Location Tech bashing going on"/

This negative "bashing" of other organisations has to completely
stop because it is having a massive negative impact on OSGeo.

We've recently lost a respected former board member (who has
resigned his charter member status) and the OSGeo president, both
in relation to how we've conducted ourselves in relation to other
organisations in the community.  These internal losses are not due
to there being other organisations in the geospatial world, nor
how they are acting - but instead our losses are due to how we
ourselves are thinking and behaving.

OSGeo should positively support all elements of the geospatial
community including users, developers and also other organisations
to the fullest and best of our ability.  By doing this we become
stronger (instead of weaker) and will remain useful, relevant and
of interest to the community who will continue to invest their
energy and efforts with us and recognise our unique value and
position.

In relation to LocationTech - similar divisions exist across the
entire Open Source world (take a look at LibreOffice and
OpenOffice, or MariaDB and MySQL).  The broard "FOSS4G" community
(encompassing both OSGeo and LocationTech) is not alone in facing
this, and my hope is that OSGeo can once again be a beacon to the
rest of the open source world and show how best to embrace these
differences, understand the strengths and weakness in both camps,
and work together for the positive benefit 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] parcel data in US

[Stephen Woodbridge]

And another I had bookmarked a while ago:

http://www.boundarysolutions.com/BSI/page1.php

-Steve

On 10/18/2015 7:57 PM, Raj R Singh wrote:

One for-fee source is http://courthouseusa.com/
“Nearly 100 million property records with parcel boundaries in one
standard format.”

---
Raj Singh
r...@rajsingh.org 
(617) 642-9372
http://www.rajsingh.org/


On Oct 17, 2015, at 5:19 AM, Anca Brisan > wrote:

Jachym,
Because you didn't specify a particular part of the US, I'll say a few
cases that I've dealt with. I would suggest you to start at state
level and then go lower by county, town/city...

Florida - open data - easy download for the whole state
ftp://sdrftp03.dor.state.fl.us/Map%20Data/00_2015/
California, mostly open, easy to search by county - LA, San
Francisco, San Diego, etc ... easy download
NY state you should find some parcel data by county here:
https://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/  - most of the parcels are old
NYC  - recent data, direct download from nyc.gov 
Texas - again search by county, not to many results.
MA, CT, PA, NJ and Indina states give opportunity for direct download
for many counties, towns, municipalities in their state, the parcel
data might be a few years old.

Anca

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 8:57 PM, Newcomb, Doug > wrote:

Jachym,
The State of North Carolina has parcel data statewide at NCOnemap,
http://data.nconemap.gov/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page .
Search for parcels.

Doug

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 4:09 AM, Jachym Cepicky
> wrote:

Hi,

(sorry for cross posted and slightly off-topic mail)

for business purpose, I was asked to find out, where we could
get some parcel data in USA - not necessary for free (assumed,
we would like to start our business with the data, reasonable
prise is expected).

Could anybody point me to agency/private business company, who
is providing such kind of data? Where would you say is the
best starting point?

Thanks for hints

Jachym


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Raleigh, NC
919-856-4520 ext. 14 
doug_newc...@fws.gov 

-
The opinions I express are my own and are not representative of
the official policy of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service or Dept.
of the Interior.   Life is too short for undocumented, proprietary
data formats. As a federal employee, my email may be subject to
FOIA request.

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Renaming FOSS4G

[Stephen Woodbridge]

+1 on the less is more and on renaming.

Marketing is about establishing a brand (among other things).

It is clear who owns the OSGeo brand.

Who owns the FOSS4G brand belong to?

what is the added value of supporting this brand? and potentially 
diluting or confusing the OSGeo brand?


Many brands have tag lines. Maybe adding a tag line would add to OSGeo 
whatever people feel FOSS4G has that OSGeo does not.


OSGeo - Bringing free open source geospatial software to the world!

Or whatever is appropriate.

-Steve

On 10/7/2015 4:08 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:

+1 for "OSGeo conference".

Adding a perspective from someone who marketed FOSS4G 2009.
Creating a marketing message is all about minimising words used, because
"less words get read more".

When explaining FOSS4G to people outside our community you need to use:

"international conference for Free and Open Source Software for
GeoSpatial (FOSS4G), presented by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
(OSGeo)."

vs

"international Open Source Geospatial (OSGeo) conference"

This is a good question to put to the charter members for a vote at some
point.

On 8/10/2015 1:39 am, Marc Peterson wrote:

From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-
boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Barry Rowlingson
Yes, you and I and everyone *on this mailing list* knows
the difference and the relationship between OSGeo and FOSS4G. But
there are people out there in geospatial who don't know either.

Emphatic +1

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Darrell,

Thank you for you assessment, I think this is a great call for action 
and it puts words to a lot of my feelings about OSGeo.


If you look at most of the successful projects they are driven by 
someone with vision and passion that pulls in others to work toward 
concrete goals.


If you take the structure of a successful project (ie: the process, PSC, 
voting, etc) and apply it to project that does not have the leadership, 
it does not make it successful. OSGeo feels like this later case.


For OSGeo to be relevant to me, it needs to be more about what OSGeo is 
doing for its members and helping it members be successful and 
profitable so they are invested in growing and sustaining OSGeo, rather 
than what can I do for OSGeo. If OSGeo is not helping the projects that 
I care about and/or helping me grow my business (this can be as simple 
as brand marketing so my clients are aware of the value of working with 
someone that is part of OSGeo), then what is it doing?


If OSGeo didn't exist, it is not clear to me that the projects would 
suffer greatly, with the exception that FOSSG has been successful.


I'm not say that everything is bad, but I think a realistic reassessment 
is needed and maybe a total overhaul should be on the table.


Thanks,
  -Steve

On 9/25/2015 3:57 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote:

The recent discussion on the board list
that
came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking about a
few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.

Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put some
time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply is
appreciated.

Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the
whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head for
a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.

I will start with a provocative thesis:

OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
irrelevant.

Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break down
the statement.

“Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and “leadership.”
I will address each in turn.


OSGeo lacks vision

I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
. I wonder: when was
the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and relevancy?

Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s left
as an exercise to the reader.)


  Example 1

To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
funding, legal.

Allow me to break each of those examples down.


Infrastructure

It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac
instance, Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we pay
some $3,500/yr to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if such a
service is necessary, however. Issue tracking and source control are
much better provided by Github, which is free for organization such as ours.
I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere
and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer time (more on
that below).

There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken advantage
of. For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G infrastructure:
conference websites and registration, a central location for conference
videos (regardless of platform/provider). This neglect is especially
galling given that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole source of income.


Funding

OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for Code
Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget
.


Legal

I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel
free to correct me.


Conclusion

OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in ways
that could save money.

My grade: D


Example 2

To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without data.

The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing the
mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no meaningful
activity in the past two years (maybe more).

My grade: F


Example 3

To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry
(not just foundation software) - eg. PR, training, outreach.

The Board of Directors
page
says:


Packaging and Marketing

OSGeo’s marketing effort has primarily been focused around the packaging
and documentation efforts of OSGeo-Live, and to a lesser extend[sic],
osgeo4w. […] It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour, with 140
OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been covered by local
events or 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Board elections

[Stephen Woodbridge]

+1 on having more time.

On 9/25/2015 1:47 AM, Gert-Jan van der Weijden - Stichting OSGeo.nl wrote:

To avoid confusion: the election date has been confirmed by the CRO to
end on 27 september 12.00 GMT

With respect for all the board candidates and their busy agenda, I think
for the election campaign (manifestos + discussion) this is as good as
it gets.

For 2016, we might try to weave the election campaign into the FOSS4G :
have candidates 2 weeks before FOSS4G, let the candidates state a
manifesto, and have a election debate in the main hall in Bonn (which is
the former German parliament chamber!)

regards,

Gert-Jan

*Van:*discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *Namens *Ravi Kumar
*Verzonden:* vrijdag 25 september 2015 07:17
*Aan:* discuss
*Onderwerp:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Board elections

  There are -5- manifestos as of now.

Pl insert the missing manifestos and give us a good contest.

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 11:27 AM, Ravi Kumar
>
wrote:

My Dear OSGeo Charter members,

the board election date 26th Sept is just a few days away.

Charter members only can vote for the Board and so it is The Most
Important Duty.

If anything, regional representation is of great significance,
especially in the Developing Countries. So please give a thought to this ..

Cheers

Ravi Kumar



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] code of conduct: another real case

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Ok, maybe I don't understand, but why doesn't somebody just fix this 
issue. It seems everyone agrees the listing is wrong on the site. 
Somebody should have a cease and desist letter sent to the site to 
change the owner to the correct name or remove the posting.


whois openhub.net

for the site particulars. This assumes that the person the created the 
posting on the site is unknown or not available to change it.


It might expedite things if BOTH osgeo and rasdaman GmbH sent similar 
letters making similar requests so the site gets confirmation from both 
parties and does not need to worry if this is an attempt to "steal" the 
listing.


-Steve W

On 9/18/2015 10:28 AM, Michael Gerlek wrote:

I agree: Peter’s issue doesn’t seem to be a Code of Conduct issue, it
seems closer to a Code of Ethics issue — but even that’s not quite
right. I think this is more properly a grievance to be taken up
directly with the Board.

Suggestion: the CoC team right want to consider a couple lines on the
wiki page that (further) clarify the intent of the Code of Conduct,
as opposed to the intent of a Code of Ethics [1][2]. The two are
similar in their ultimate goals, but address different areas of our
professional lives and activities [3].

[1] https://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics [2]
http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html [3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_code

-mpg





On Sep 17, 2015, at 5:17 PM, Camille Acey 
wrote:

I am having a hard time seeing how this is a CoC matter. Camille

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 4:56 PM, Jeff McKenna
 wrote: Hi Peter,

It may be early here at FOSS4G-Seoul, but I am finding it hard to
understand your full issue.  Can you please explain here to
everyone what you mean by "I found that OSGeo has claimed rasdaman
at some time in the past".  Claimed how/where/in what way?  As far
as I know, rasdaman is an OSGeo Project in Incubation, and, having
been at the OSGeo booth here most of this week I have spoken to
many people coming to the booth about rasdaman.  So, pardon me if I
am in the total dark here, maybe you could explain more to
everyone, as I sense that you are upset.

Thanks,

-jeff




On 2015-09-18 1:21 AM, Peter Baumann wrote: Hello community,

here is another real case that I would like to raise.

rasdaman [0] is listed on OpenHub [1], like many of us, with owner
rasdaman GmbH set originally. By coincidence I found that OSGeo has
claimed rasdaman at some time in the past.

To my total surprise, as rasdaman is in incubation since about 5
years now [2], and since quite some time OSGeo refuses graduation
requiring this and that extra documentation.

I find this undercover misappropriation a gross violation of
professional ethics and request to immediately "give back" the
project as a remedial action. I could do it myself, but recently
OpenHub requires a phone number to be entered to which, as blog
comments show, spam will get sent. IMO it is on OSGeo to bring this
sacrifice.

Actually, I know who has "stolen ownership", but will not disclose
identity publicly following suggested practice.

Rather, I am seeking contact to and investigation by the CoC
Committee (or whoever is in charge).

Thanks, Peter

[0] http://www.rasdaman.org [1] https://www.openhub.net/p/rasdaman
[2] http://rasdaman.org/wiki/OSGeo

PS: On the side, this IMHO justifies an amendment of the CoC rules
to prevent such a case in future.



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Fwd: Nomination for Ko Nagase

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Another +1 for Ko Nagase.

He is a long term supporter of pgRouting and pgRoutingLayer for QGIS. He 
supports OSX builds and debugging issues and all platforms. He is a 
valuable contributor and supported this and other projects for many years.


Thanks,
  -Steve

On 8/30/2015 7:46 AM, 林博文 wrote:

+1 for Ko

Best regards,
Hayashi

2015-08-26 10:05 GMT+09:00 Daniel Kastl dan...@georepublic.de
mailto:dan...@georepublic.de:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

+1 I would like to second this nomination.

Best regards,
Daniel


On 25/08/15 14:41, Vasile Craciunescu wrote:
  Forwarding Ko Nagase nomination by Venkatesh Raghavan.
 
  Best regards, Vasile
 
 
 
   Forwarded Message  Subject: Nomination for Ko
  Nagase Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 22:20:53 +0900 From: Venkatesh
  Raghavan ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp
mailto:ragha...@media.osaka-cu.ac.jp To: OSGeo Chief Returning
  Officer c...@osgeo.org mailto:c...@osgeo.org CC: Ko Nagase
nag...@georepublic.co.jp mailto:nag...@georepublic.co.jp
 
  Dear CRO,
 
  It is my pleasure and privilege to nominate Ko Nagase as Charter
  Member for the 2015 elections.
 
  Ko Nagase is not only very active in the OSGeo. JP community he
  also contributes to several FOSS4G projects such like QGIS
  (pgRouting plugin [1]), pgRouting, OSGeo-Live [2] and others [2].
  He possess all the requisite qualities to be a OSGeo Charter Member
  and will be a great  to our Foundation.
 
  He is currently a board member of OSGeo.JP and has kindly consented
  for the nomination.
 
  Best
 
  Venka
 
  [1]
 
https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/author/Anita%20Graser,%20Ko%20Nagase/
 
 
[2] https://github.com/sanak
 
 
 
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Invitation to participate in the OSGeo membership consultations

[Stephen Woodbridge]

+1 Frank's statement is exactly what I would like to see also.

-Steve

On 8/3/2015 12:39 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

Folks,

For what it's worth, I also do not feel comfortable with completing
the survey as it is currently structured as the structure forces me to
give answers that don't really represent my views.

For what it's worth I am in favor of:
  - a modest number of charter members using something like the current process
  - open membership
  - no manditory membership fees
  - make every effort to treat regular members the same as charter
members except for the minimum voting stuff required to be legally
distinct.

Best regards,
Frank



On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Jim Klassen klassen...@gmail.com wrote:

I have been involved in the MapServer and GeoMoose projects since before
OSGeo existed.  I remember the founding of OSGeo and the heated
discussions that took place to define the direction OSGeo would take.
The future of OSGeo and how it interacts with its members is very
important to me.

However, as a charter member, this current discussion and particularly
the survey has me confused as to how I should respond.

For starters: Should I be taking the survey now or waiting for it to be
improved?  Where are the results of this survey going?  Does this survey
count as an official vote(s)?

On 08/03/2015 05:16 AM, Vasile Craciunescu wrote:

Dear Bruce, Steve, Even, Peter, Dan and others,

Sorry for replying so late. I'm in vacation with limited Internet
access. Personally, I agree with many of your points. However, as
Steven already pointed out, we had a few days of open discussions on
the survey before sending to our Charter members. Somehow I expected
that our Charter members are subscribed on the discuss and board
mailing list and following the topics there. Perhaps we need a
dedicated mailing list for our Charter members or the invitation to
comment on the survey should be also sent individually to all our
Charter members. Not sure about the right approach. Anyway, please
keep in mind that this is the first time we are polling our members
and we still have to learn and adjust our communication skills.

Now, regarding the survey. The main point was to find the best method
to select our Charter members. This is an ongoing discussion for many
years. The survey included the previous voting options and some new
proposals. Then, some people suggested to use this opportunity to
include additionally questions regarding the future of OSGeo
membership. That's how the survey was created. The survey is really
flawed if is not connected with the discussions on the board and
discuss mailing lists. Different people, different angles, different
opinions... But only a fraction of our members expressed their
ideas/questions/opinions before assembling the survey. That's why the
survey looks heterogeneous. I did my best to merge similar topics and
not to include redundant questions. I also did not remove any question
based on my own judgement. Anyway, I find this exercise very useful
for our community. We should discuss further to keep our organization
on the right track.

Warm regards from the sunny Black Sea coast!
Vasile

PS I'm slowly catching up will all the emails on this thread (most of
them privately sent). I'll get back when I have the full picture.

On 7/31/15 3:07 AM, Bruce Bannerman wrote:

Hi Vassile,

This survey appears to be flawed.

I applaud your efforts to bring this issue to a head, but I'm not
convinced
that we'll get valid results from the survey.


In my case:

I believe that there should be open membership for any interested,
perhaps
with a membership fee.

I also see the value of recognising key contributors voted through some
meritocracy process as the current Charter Membership allows, with this
group having a voting responsibility. This is in essence not very
different
from the concept of a 'committers' group within an open source
project. I
don't really care if the name 'Charter Membership' is changed.


However the survey appears to lead people into a binary situation where
they believe in 'open' or 'closed' with 'closed' apparently assigned to
those favouring 'Charter Membership'.


For example:

I'd like to vote NO to 'Should OSGeo move from the actual elected
Charter
member model to an (open) regular membership?'

But, YES to 'If you agree with the OSGeo regular membership, do you also
agree with a low annual membership fee?'

However, I'm precluded from doing so, because I answered NO to Q1.

For Question 4, I would like to answer both:

- YES for Open, in the context that everyone interested should be
able to
participate in discussions and the OSGeo Community (perhaps having
paid a
membership fee); and

- YES for 'Closed', in the context of key votes being subject to the
equivalent of a 'Committers' list where people have been voted in
through
some meritocracy process.

- However, I can only choose one or the other!


I haven't read the remaining questions at this stage, 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Invitation to participate in the OSGeo membership consultations

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think Bruce has put some of my concerns about the questions into good 
examples the resonate with my concerns.


For example: I am a long time contributor to multiple OSGeo projects and 
have mentored some smaller projects that are not OSGeo projects yet but 
are key pieces of GIS infrastructure. I have invested a lot of time and 
effort and as a consultant, being able claim I'm a Charter Member gives 
me some marketing credibility.


I would like to vote for both general membership and meritorious 
membership, or to say both exclusive and inclusive membership classes 
and we might want a third class sponsorship class of membership.


Given the amount of time I invest in OSGeo including being a GSoC Mentor 
for 6-7 years which benefited OSGeo financially, I find it hard to vote 
for membership dues.


I know this is a complex issues and everyone has an opinion, so more 
power to you for taking on this task. If you can do anything to address 
these types of concerns that would make this survey all the more 
valuable. Maybe do not force a sequence of questions and let each 
question stand on its own with an other write in field.


Best regards,
  -Steve

On 7/30/2015 8:07 PM, Bruce Bannerman wrote:

Hi Vassile,

This survey appears to be flawed.

I applaud your efforts to bring this issue to a head, but I'm not
convinced that we'll get valid results from the survey.


In my case:

I believe that there should be open membership for any interested,
perhaps with a membership fee.

I also see the value of recognising key contributors voted through some
meritocracy process as the current Charter Membership allows, with this
group having a voting responsibility. This is in essence not very
different from the concept of a 'committers' group within an open source
project. I don't really care if the name 'Charter Membership' is changed.


However the survey appears to lead people into a binary situation where
they believe in 'open' or 'closed' with 'closed' apparently assigned to
those favouring 'Charter Membership'.


For example:

I'd like to vote NO to 'Should OSGeo move from the actual elected
Charter member model to an (open) regular membership?'

But, YES to 'If you agree with the OSGeo regular membership, do you also
agree with a low annual membership fee?'

However, I'm precluded from doing so, because I answered NO to Q1.

For Question 4, I would like to answer both:

- YES for Open, in the context that everyone interested should be able
to participate in discussions and the OSGeo Community (perhaps having
paid a membership fee); and

- YES for 'Closed', in the context of key votes being subject to the
equivalent of a 'Committers' list where people have been voted in
through some meritocracy process.

- However, I can only choose one or the other!


I haven't read the remaining questions at this stage, given the flawed
questions at the beginning.



I apologise if you had sent this out for review earlier. I have not been
following this debate closely as this type of membership noise pops up
on a regular basis.

However, when this proceeds to a vote of the OSGeo Charter membership, I
need to register a comment.


For consideration.

Bruce









From: Vasile Crăciunescu c...@osgeo.org mailto:c...@osgeo.org
Reply-To: Vasile Crăciunescu c...@osgeo.org mailto:c...@osgeo.org
Date: Thursday, 30 July 2015 23:52
To: Bruce Bannerman 
Subject: Invitation to participate in the OSGeo membership consultations

Dear Bruce,

As an existing OSGeo Charter Member, you have been invited to
participate in the 2015 OSGeo membership consultations.

To participate, please click on the link below.

Sincerely,

Vasile ()

--




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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] Kicking off Elections 2015 process

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Vasile,

The survey looks excellent but a minor structural change suggestion 
would be to put the voting questions last. The reason for this change is 
that the voting should be based on how you think about the later 
questions. By reversing the order of these you force the user to think 
about the important questions regarding what is membership in the user's 
mind and then ask them to quantify that in voting rules.


Thanks for all your hard work on this.

-Steve W


On 7/27/2015 8:26 AM, Vasile Craciunescu wrote:

Dear all,

Please accept my apologies for all the delays related to this survey.

You can all check the actual structure of the survey at

https://survey.des.ucdavis.edu/osgeo/index.php/survey/index/sid/879386/newtest/Y/lang/en


*Please do not execute the survey!* Separate invitations will be sent to
all our charter members as soon as we agree with the survey structure.

I have tried to include help text, comments and references for all the
important question, especially the one related to the charter member
election mechanism - this part may look a little bit bureaucratic, any
suggestions fore improvement more than welcome. A simple application was
created to allow you to understand the impact of the selected formula
and threshold using the last year votes. You can access the application at

http://geo-spatial.org/charter2014-sim/

A link was included in the survey too.

Any comments, requests for change or to include additional questions are
welcome. Please respond ASAP as the time is running fast.

Best,
Vasile

OSGeo 2015 CRO


On 7/26/15 8:36 PM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:

So is there a proposal for the survey questions already somewhere?

Bart

Sent from my iPhone


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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think the idea would be that an Incubated Project would have meet 
all the basic stars. Obviously the steps that get you to be incubated 
are the same steps that a project have to achieve to get stars. It seems 
like there are goals to get you to incubated and then goals to get you 
to graduated. But really it is a continuous process of achievement 
with milestones along the way that can be easily verified.


Regardless of a name, it seems like having a progressive well defined 
path than can be managed under by the same program and that minimizes 
the effort by OSGeo staff in the initial steps would be a good thing for 
everyone involved. This should not be diluting anyone's efforts as long 
as it is clear what the stars means in the way of progress and effort of 
the projects involved.


-Steve W

On 3/5/2015 2:57 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

I'm not sure I like diluting the Incubated Project status by turning
it into a star rating in which incubated and non-incubated projects are
mixed.

Incubated projects have taken steps to review their code and adjust
their way to operate to meet several requirements, and just a set of
stars do not relay that properly to the outside world.

That being said, I have no alternative name to offer for the OSGeo
Labs pre-incubation status at the moment, so I'll stay out of the debate.

Daniel


On 2015-03-05 5:52 AM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:

Or you’re saying you want to address this with the stars system? So 1
star for existing labs projects for instance?

Jody, as chair of the incubation committee, what’s your take on this?

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:51, Bart van den Eijnden bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl wrote:

I don’t think you can put projects that have gone through incubation
and the projects that still have to incubate at the same level. But
that’s my opinion only.

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:18, Jachym Cepicky jachym.cepi...@gmail.com
mailto:jachym.cepi...@gmail.com wrote:

Guys,

I think you are trying to find a term for something, I would like to
get rid of. OSGeo Project is, what I would like to achieve for both
- today's projects and labs together under one hat.

Or anybody thinks completely different?

Just my $.02
J

čt 5. 3. 2015 v 9:08 odesílatel Suchith Anand
suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk
mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk napsal:

Yes, i think Incubator Projects is an appropriate name for this.

Vaclav - Is this ok for you?

Suchith
__
From: Bart van den Eijnden [bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl]
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2015 7:34 AM
To: Vaclav Petras
Cc: Suchith Anand; discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

I agree Community Projects is a confusing name.

What about incubator projects? That’s the term that Apache uses.

http://incubator.apache.org http://incubator.apache.org/

Best regards,
Bart

On 04 Mar 2015, at 23:25, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com
mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:w__enzesl...@gmail.com
mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote:



On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Suchith Anand
suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.__uk

mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.ukmailto:Suchith.Anand@__nottingham.ac.uk

mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk wrote:
Thanks Jeff.

Though we had lots of discussions afterwards and continuing on
this , we couldnt find any solution till now. So this might be a
good opportunity  to modify the Incubation's labs term, to
something like Community Projects to avoid confusion if that is
acceptable to Vaclav, Jachym and others. Many thanks.

Well, I'm not particularly fond of Community Projects as a
name. Even mature FOSS projects are community projects in one way
or the other. Unfortunately, I don't have other suggestion.

Vaclav

Suchith

__
From: discuss-bounces@lists.osgeo.__org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:discuss-bounces@__lists.osgeo.org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org
[discuss-bounces@lists.osgeo.__org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:discuss-bounces@__lists.osgeo.org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
McKenna [jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com

mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com__mailto:jmckenna@__gatewaygeomatics.com

mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 2:26 PM
To: discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org__mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org__
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

(we are approaching 2 full years that this labs naming has
been an
issue and discussed[1])

Today, knowing how ingrained the term 'lab' is in the GeoForAll
education network, maybe Jachym is 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think this is a good idea and I like the transparency. We might want 
both a verbose and a compact presentation of their progress. For example 
if you listed all the projects (like: one line for each) it would be 
nice to be able to rank them or show what their progress is toward 
completing their acceptance into OSGeo in a compact way. Something like:


[status] [Project name[url]] Short description
...

or in longer form:

[Project name[url]]
[Short description]
[Long description]
[detailed status]

...

where [status] could be stars or equivalent that link to a detailed 
description of that it means and [detailed status] might be a list of 
steps required and the status of progress through the steps.


As part of our branding we might want to setup requirements for how 
these are presented and linked. In this way we some control over our 
brand and how projects can use it in this process.


-Steve W

On 3/5/2015 3:25 PM, Peter Baumann wrote:

hm, what about replacing the anonymous stars by concrete fulfilments? A project
might earn fulfilments, such as has PC, successful code review, etc. All it
would require is to boil down the requirements into a 1-digit number of
sections, each one earning one named star then. My main argument for this is
achievement transparency for the reader. Links under the stars might explain the
meaning, or refer to the individual project's mentor assessment on the
particular facet. Again, this would increase transparency IMHO.
my 0.02,
Peter


On 03/05/2015 09:13 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

I think the idea would be that an Incubated Project would have meet all the
basic stars. Obviously the steps that get you to be incubated are the same
steps that a project have to achieve to get stars. It seems like there are
goals to get you to incubated and then goals to get you to graduated. But
really it is a continuous process of achievement with milestones along the way
that can be easily verified.

Regardless of a name, it seems like having a progressive well defined path
than can be managed under by the same program and that minimizes the effort by
OSGeo staff in the initial steps would be a good thing for everyone involved.
This should not be diluting anyone's efforts as long as it is clear what the
stars means in the way of progress and effort of the projects involved.

-Steve W

On 3/5/2015 2:57 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

I'm not sure I like diluting the Incubated Project status by turning
it into a star rating in which incubated and non-incubated projects are
mixed.

Incubated projects have taken steps to review their code and adjust
their way to operate to meet several requirements, and just a set of
stars do not relay that properly to the outside world.

That being said, I have no alternative name to offer for the OSGeo
Labs pre-incubation status at the moment, so I'll stay out of the debate.

Daniel


On 2015-03-05 5:52 AM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:

Or you’re saying you want to address this with the stars system? So 1
star for existing labs projects for instance?

Jody, as chair of the incubation committee, what’s your take on this?

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:51, Bart van den Eijnden bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl wrote:

I don’t think you can put projects that have gone through incubation
and the projects that still have to incubate at the same level. But
that’s my opinion only.

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:18, Jachym Cepicky jachym.cepi...@gmail.com
mailto:jachym.cepi...@gmail.com wrote:

Guys,

I think you are trying to find a term for something, I would like to
get rid of. OSGeo Project is, what I would like to achieve for both
- today's projects and labs together under one hat.

Or anybody thinks completely different?

Just my $.02
J

čt 5. 3. 2015 v 9:08 odesílatel Suchith Anand
suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk
mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk napsal:

 Yes, i think Incubator Projects is an appropriate name for this.

 Vaclav - Is this ok for you?

 Suchith
 __
 From: Bart van den Eijnden [bart...@osgis.nl
 mailto:bart...@osgis.nl]
 Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2015 7:34 AM
 To: Vaclav Petras
 Cc: Suchith Anand; discuss@lists.osgeo.org
 mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org
 Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

 I agree Community Projects is a confusing name.

 What about incubator projects? That’s the term that Apache uses.

 http://incubator.apache.org http://incubator.apache.org/

 Best regards,
 Bart

 On 04 Mar 2015, at 23:25, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com
 mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:w__enzesl...@gmail.com
 mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Suchith Anand
 suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.__uk

mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.ukmailto:Suchith.Anand@__nottingham.ac.uk


 mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk wrote:
 Thanks

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I think this type of system makes a lot of sense especially if you tie 
the achievement of stars to completing the various requirements of 
incubation and graduation.


-Steve

On 3/5/2015 6:18 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:

Bart,

that needs to be discussed but as example: yes, 1 star for current labs,
4 stars for current incubated projects



čt 5. 3. 2015 v 12:16 odesílatel Bart van den Eijnden bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl napsal:

Or you’re saying you want to address this with the stars system? So
1 star for existing labs projects for instance?

Jody, as chair of the incubation committee, what’s your take on this?

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:51, Bart van den Eijnden bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl wrote:

I don’t think you can put projects that have gone through
incubation and the projects that still have to incubate at the
same level. But that’s my opinion only.

Best regards,
Bart


On 05 Mar 2015, at 11:18, Jachym Cepicky
jachym.cepi...@gmail.com mailto:jachym.cepi...@gmail.com wrote:

Guys,

I think you are trying to find a term for something, I would like
to get rid of. OSGeo Project is, what I would like to achieve
for both - today's projects and labs together under one hat.

Or anybody thinks completely different?

Just my $.02
J

čt 5. 3. 2015 v 9:08 odesílatel Suchith Anand
suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk
mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk napsal:

Yes, i think Incubator Projects is an appropriate name for
this.

Vaclav - Is this ok for you?

Suchith
__
From: Bart van den Eijnden [bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl]
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2015 7:34 AM
To: Vaclav Petras
Cc: Suchith Anand; discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

I agree Community Projects is a confusing name.

What about incubator projects? That’s the term that Apache uses.

http://incubator.apache.org http://incubator.apache.org/

Best regards,
Bart

On 04 Mar 2015, at 23:25, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com
mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:w__enzesl...@gmail.com
mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote:



On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Suchith Anand
suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.__uk

mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.ukmailto:Suchith.Anand@__nottingham.ac.uk
mailto:suchith.an...@nottingham.ac.uk wrote:
Thanks Jeff.

Though we had lots of discussions afterwards and continuing
on this , we couldnt find any solution till now. So this
might be a good opportunity  to modify the Incubation's
labs term, to something like Community Projects to avoid
confusion if that is acceptable to Vaclav, Jachym and others.
Many thanks.

Well, I'm not particularly fond of Community Projects as a
name. Even mature FOSS projects are community projects in one
way or the other. Unfortunately, I don't have other suggestion.

Vaclav

Suchith

__
From: discuss-bounces@lists.osgeo.__org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:discuss-bounces@__lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org
[discuss-bounces@lists.osgeo.__org

mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:discuss-bounces@__lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
McKenna [jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com

mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com__mailto:jmckenna@__gatewaygeomatics.com
mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2015 2:26 PM
To: discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org__mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org
mailto:discuss@lists.osgeo.org__
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

(we are approaching 2 full years that this labs naming has
been an
issue and discussed[1])

Today, knowing how ingrained the term 'lab' is in the GeoForAll
education network, maybe Jachym is correct that it is a good
time to
modify the Incubation's labs term, to something like Community
Projects.

[1]

http://lists.osgeo.org/__pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2013-__June/000134.html
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2013-June/000134.html

-jeff




On 2015-03-03 3:42 AM, Suchith Anand wrote:
 Vaclav,

 Please accept my sincere apologies as it was my mistake
that i did not think on this  when we started the ICA-OSGeo
Labs initiative (so many things were going on at that time!).

  

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New incubation procedure

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 2/16/2015 6:44 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:

Hi,

I would like to dig a bit more into the topic more fine incubation
procedure and former OSGeo Labs (now it has no name is slowly
forgotten in past, but you can find more at
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Labs)

I would like to start talk about it a bit (I suggest incubator mailing
list), prepared wiki page (with confusing name):
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/5-star-rating

Scope: to re-new OSGeo Labs, make the incubation process easier for all
of us, with more little steps (except for one big). Projects could flow
between the steps up and down, related to their current living phase.

I hope, this would help to the community to get oriented, would allow
more projects to join in. Work for incubation committee and mentors
could be even less (some projects will remain in beta). It's also
related to the certification topic (even not people, but software).

Jachym


This makes a lot of sense to me. I am involved with a lot of smaller 
projects that are valuable but unlikely to be able to stand on their own 
because the community is weak.


pagc (geocoding) - this is all but dead as a project but out of it came 
a core piece of technology the has been moved into postGIS Geocoder


pgRouting - driving directions and vehicle routing problems, we have 
contributed 8+ GSoC mentors to OSGeo over the past years, but it has 
been hard to get funding and volunteers to support ongoing development 
and project releases. We have looked at incubation, but we do not have a 
strong enough community to be able to graduate.


It would be good to have a way to foster projects like this and to look 
for opportunities to merge smaller projects into larger ones that where 
their might be a good fit. I think that we need to better recognize that 
there will be projects that might not be able to stand on their own but 
that they may also be fertile ground for development of good technology 
and that mentoring and redirecting these projects could be a good way to 
harvest this.


Anyway, something to think about ...

Best,
  -Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Membership fee (was: Proposed process for selecting OSGeo charter members)

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Dirk,

Thank you for putting a lot of what I have been feeling about this issue 
into words.


Well said,
  -Steve

On 7/1/2014 12:46 PM, Dirk Frigne wrote:

Although I am not so active on the mailing list,  I am an OSGeo's
advocate, and I take the opportunity to promote OSGeo wherever I can.

I became an OSGeo member in 2007 because I was proud on what the
organisation did and I wanted to support it, with the scarce resources I
own.

One of the things I appreciate enormously is

- The organisation is open (as in open source)
- Becoming a member of the organisation is totally free (*yes* like in
free beer!)
- the organisation has a perfect DNA:
 - members can
 - act as *A* user
 - act as *T*echnical skilled person (sofware developers,
industry, documentation)
 - work at *G*overmental body
 - member of the s*C*ientific world (academic world)

In the world of today *free* as in gratis, *free* as in *free* *beer*,
doing something for
somebody else is very rare (scarce) that it becomes very valuable.
Being a part of a community like OSGeo not only is *fun* but also gives
you a *good* feeling, and it is very motivating to work in a company or
organisation that supports OSGeo.

I may be naive, but for me personally this works out well, and having
that feeling is one of the important incentives to keep contributing to
the community. (And by the way, working with other members of the OSGeo
community didn't result in any bad experience until now)

Of course, an organisation needs money, To support some stuff (.svn or
whathever goal is worth supporting). But I think we should keep the
membership *free* (and not as in *free* beer!), because it is in my eyes
a very essential part of OSGeo:

Core principles are:

 OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation.
 OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives
which support themselves.  [1]

As in DNA, different chains have different roles.

*G*overnments are happy to have such a movement as the Free and open
source software [2] movement, because they can avoid vendor lock-in,
gain control over their projects (read: become free again), and save a
lot of money. They should take this advantage seriously and sponsor open
source activities.

the s*C*ientific world is happy to use open source solutions, because
they can study the tools themselves and focus on research, not being
bothered of the licenses they are using.
They also should take this advantage seriously and donate scientific
relevant material they don't want to exploit immediately to the community.

*A*ny user should be free (*not* as in free beer) to use and experiment
with the results of what the community is producing. The community
should welcome *A*ny user and help him to find his way, so he can take
his responsibility and earn respect for what he is doing.

And last but not least: the *T*echnically skilled persons are the heart
of the community. Being able to create great teamwork and donate back to
the community. Also they should take their responsibility and earn the
respect they deserve.

But where is the money we need to operate the organisation?

Personally, I don't think it are the users nor the community members who
should take care of that. Because the belonging to the community should
remain a *free* right, where the value comes from respect and the
intense feeling of giving something without expecting something back.

The strange thing is that many of the members are also professional
involved into OSGeo (acting as A T G or C).
So I suggest it should not be the (community) members who should pay for
the support, but these professional actors.
And they (the professional actors) should become a member (in their role
of incorporation) to support it. But sponsored membership should not
give rights to vote, or whatsoever. The only thing you gain is that you,
as a professional incorporation, are happy with an organisation as
OSGeo, fighting for your rights to be able to use *free* software.  And
the sponsors should trust and believe that a low capital, volunteer
focused organisation will do that for them, as they do it already today.

The sponsoring should not be an obligation either, but should be the
common responsibility of the companies sponsoring the FOSS4G events today.

my 2c

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_of_Directors#Board_Priorities
[2] http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software

Dirk
On 24-06-14 15:12, Even Rouault wrote:

Hi,

Interesting topic that raises quite a few questions.

I think that all people who have commented in that thread have not necessarily
agreed if membership fees would be something in addition to the nomination and
election processs, or if it would replace it.

If we switch to a paid membership, one would likely have to identify the
benefits brought by being a member. Voting rights for the board would probably
not a big enough benefit. In the AAG example quoted by Paul, there are 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Membership fee (was: Proposed process for selecting OSGeo charter members)

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Folks,

I'll toss my two cents into this discussion. I think a lot of this has 
been already stated in part by others.


o while I don't object to a membership fee in principal it has to come 
with some benefits for the member not for OSGeo. While it might be 
beneficial to OSGeo by providing an income stream, I think it is more 
important that the member gets a significant benefit above and beyond 
whatever benefits of association they currently get.


o since this is currently a volunteer organization and there are a lot 
of people that volunteer a lot of effort to OSGeo it seems like a lot to 
ask them to also volunteer funds in addition to their time. I would be 
concerned that if people have to pay a fee then we might see a 
significant reduction in effort in time volunteered and this could 
potentially offset the funds received from fees.


This discussion started discussing membership and voting and has wrapped 
into membership fees. I understand that this is part of our growing 
process as an organization, but this feels like a random walk around the 
various aspects of how other orgs deal with members. I clearly don't 
know all the issues, but I think if we want to make a reasonable case 
for doing any of the things discussed we need a more coherent plan that 
we can sell to the members and should how Membership has privileges 
and benefits to them and how it also helps the organization over time.


When OSGeo was formed a lot of model for it was taken from the Apache 
Foundation model. I wonder how these issue fit in that, not that we have 
to follow that model, but I do think we need to have a big picture view 
of the OSGeo and where it wants to go as an organization for its members 
rather than just as a self perpetuating bureaucracy.


-Steve Woodbridge
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Membership and/or upcoming elections

[Stephen Woodbridge]

So elections are to add to our membership, then elections should support 
that activity. Maybe the conversation needs to be also about what OSGeo 
wants out of its members because that would drive the process of how to 
select them.


-Steve

On 5/7/2014 7:44 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Folks,
there always was a lot of discussion and different opinions about how we
manage OSGeo membership.

This usually happened when the elections process had already started.
After the fact everything quieted down again until - same procedure as
every year.

Instead of volunteering to go through the holistically not automated
process of manually searching 150+ mail addresses, verifying
individually with people and nudging us through elections that nobody
really thinks are useful I suggest to start a conversation (SIC! not a
discussion) [1] on how to change the current procedure, because change
it needs.

Before happily conversing away I suggest we all go back to what we
already have now and then proceed from there.

What we have:
http://www.osgeo.org/membership official documents

How we do it:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Membership_Process

Why it sucks:
* It is a bit incestuous
* Hard to maintain
* Always ''feels'' a bit fishy
* Charter Members have nothing to do most of the time
* (Appears to) exclude normal people
* tbc ... please add your personal offense

Have fun,
Eight minus one


[1] Why not a discussion? Because discussions are usually based on
predefined opinions of which a single one can win whereas all others
lose. Instead I'd like to first see an animated collection of ideas
and later on a fleshing out process to find a new way of - well, what
exactly? Having folks become OSGeo members.


- --
Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

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rQkAni/v8X5qf2F50AtpY32AUzObJ5fb
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[OSGeo-Discuss] GeoPDF generation with PHP?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

I have been using FPDF to generate pdf files using PHP. Since these 
files have among other stuff in them, map images, I am thinking that it 
would be cool and useful to add georeferencing to these files.


Does anyone know of a PHP library or package that will support 
generation of georeferenced PDF files?


I know GDAL has support to read and maybe write images as georeferenced 
pdf files, but I need to do this in PHP and I need to add other content 
to the pages.


Any thoughts or pointers on this?
  -Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org broken?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Can you post the full url to a single tile that is generating this error 
message?


If mapserver has been upgraded to v6.4 the GD/JPEG support might not be 
built into it and you might have better luck requesting 
map_imagetype=jpeg or map_imagetype=png


-Steve W


On 12/10/2013 3:09 PM, mtoothaker wrote:

As of last week sometime this started happening to us as well. We are
interfacing through OpenLayers, everything was working fine and then all of
a sudden we stop getting tiles from http://vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms/vmap0
and when I copy the request to my browser address bar I get in reply :
loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured. . When I started reading
this thead I was hoping to find my solution, but I don't know how to follow
up.

Thanks in advanced.
Mike


Frank Warmerdam wrote

Ian,

Hmm, interesting.  I was under the vague belief that the vmap0 tiles are
being generated by a variety of servers and that one of those was the
webextra VM at OSU OSL which has been having problems.  When I login I see
I'm on sphere at telescience.  Can you give me the specific request you
issue to give that response.  It may be that it is misconfigured for the
requests you are making, but it is still handling normal tile requests ok.

+cc Martin Spott who I think knows a bunch about this service.

We could likely drop osgeo discuss off this thread.

Best regards,
Frank




On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Ian Turton lt;



ijturton@



gt; wrote:


Does anyone know who to ask about vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms always
returning

loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured.

Cheers

Ian

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org broken?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

OK, interestingly that url works fine for me! But if I SHIFT-refresh a 
bunch of times I can get that error. So it seems that the load balancer 
is hitting one/some? server that is miss configured.


-Steve

On 12/10/2013 3:50 PM, Mike Toothaker wrote:

Thanks for your quick response. From firebug I captured the request that
is being made. Here is an example:

http://vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms/vmap0?LAYERS=basicSERVICE=WMSVERSION=1.1.1REQUEST=GetMapSTYLES=FORMAT=image%2FjpegSRS=EPSG%3A4326BBOX=-45,-45,0,0WIDTH=256HEIGHT=256

I would like to note, that this seems to be effecting the WMS examples
on the openlayers.org website as well.

Mike

On 12/10/2013 3:44 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Can you post the full url to a single tile that is generating this
error message?

If mapserver has been upgraded to v6.4 the GD/JPEG support might not
be built into it and you might have better luck requesting
map_imagetype=jpeg or map_imagetype=png

-Steve W


On 12/10/2013 3:09 PM, mtoothaker wrote:

As of last week sometime this started happening to us as well. We are
interfacing through OpenLayers, everything was working fine and then
all of
a sudden we stop getting tiles from
http://vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms/vmap0
and when I copy the request to my browser address bar I get in reply :
loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause
references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured. . When I started
reading
this thead I was hoping to find my solution, but I don't know how to
follow
up.

Thanks in advanced.
Mike


Frank Warmerdam wrote

Ian,

Hmm, interesting.  I was under the vague belief that the vmap0 tiles
are
being generated by a variety of servers and that one of those was the
webextra VM at OSU OSL which has been having problems.  When I login
I see
I'm on sphere at telescience.  Can you give me the specific request you
issue to give that response.  It may be that it is misconfigured for
the
requests you are making, but it is still handling normal tile
requests ok.

+cc Martin Spott who I think knows a bunch about this service.

We could likely drop osgeo discuss off this thread.

Best regards,
Frank




On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Ian Turton lt;



ijturton@



gt; wrote:


Does anyone know who to ask about vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms always
returning

loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause
references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured.

Cheers

Ian

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org broken?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Create a ticket here:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/newticket?component=Systems%20Admin

And add my comments to the ticket. This has been an open issues for 
about a month and come up on Discuss a few times so there may already be 
a ticket for it.


-Steve

On 12/10/2013 4:19 PM, Mike Toothaker wrote:

That is interesting. I seem to get it all the time. Is there anything
that you can suggest as for an avenue of recourse from my end? Do I just
wait until someone notices the misconfiguration? Can I find out which
server has the misconfiguration and attempt to contact the admin?

Thanks again for your quick help.

Mike

On 12/10/2013 4:12 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

OK, interestingly that url works fine for me! But if I SHIFT-refresh a
bunch of times I can get that error. So it seems that the load
balancer is hitting one/some? server that is miss configured.

-Steve

On 12/10/2013 3:50 PM, Mike Toothaker wrote:

Thanks for your quick response. From firebug I captured the request that
is being made. Here is an example:

http://vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms/vmap0?LAYERS=basicSERVICE=WMSVERSION=1.1.1REQUEST=GetMapSTYLES=FORMAT=image%2FjpegSRS=EPSG%3A4326BBOX=-45,-45,0,0WIDTH=256HEIGHT=256


I would like to note, that this seems to be effecting the WMS examples
on the openlayers.org website as well.

Mike

On 12/10/2013 3:44 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Can you post the full url to a single tile that is generating this
error message?

If mapserver has been upgraded to v6.4 the GD/JPEG support might not
be built into it and you might have better luck requesting
map_imagetype=jpeg or map_imagetype=png

-Steve W


On 12/10/2013 3:09 PM, mtoothaker wrote:

As of last week sometime this started happening to us as well. We are
interfacing through OpenLayers, everything was working fine and then
all of
a sudden we stop getting tiles from
http://vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms/vmap0
and when I copy the request to my browser address bar I get in reply :
loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause
references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured. . When I started
reading
this thead I was hoping to find my solution, but I don't know how to
follow
up.

Thanks in advanced.
Mike


Frank Warmerdam wrote

Ian,

Hmm, interesting.  I was under the vague belief that the vmap0 tiles
are
being generated by a variety of servers and that one of those was the
webextra VM at OSU OSL which has been having problems.  When I login
I see
I'm on sphere at telescience.  Can you give me the specific
request you
issue to give that response.  It may be that it is misconfigured for
the
requests you are making, but it is still handling normal tile
requests ok.

+cc Martin Spott who I think knows a bunch about this service.

We could likely drop osgeo discuss off this thread.

Best regards,
Frank




On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:41 AM, Ian Turton lt;



ijturton@



gt; wrote:


Does anyone know who to ask about vmap0.tiles.osgeo.org/wms always
returning

loadOutputFormat(): General error message. OUTPUTFORMAT clause
references
driver GD/JPEG, but this driver isn't configured.

Cheers

Ian

--
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[OSGeo-Discuss] pgRouting 2.0 Released

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Authors: Project Steering Committee
Release 2013-09-24

The pgRouting Team is pleased to announce the release of pgRouting 2.0.0

This 2.0 release brings a number of major new features that are 
summarized in this document.


## Table of Contents

* Major New Feature in pgRouting 2.0
* Migration Guide
* Source Code Download
* Binary Distribution
* Thanks


## Major New Feature in pgRouting 2.0

pgRouting extends the PostGIS/PostgreSQL geospatial database to provide 
geospatial routing and other network analysis functionality.


This library contains following features:

* All Pairs Shortest Path, Johnson’s Algorithm **NEW**
* All Pairs Shortest Path, Floyd-Warshall Algorithm **NEW**
* Shortest Path A*
* Bi-directional Dijkstra Shortest Path **NEW**
* Bi-directional A* Shortest Path **NEW**
* Shortest Path Dijkstra
* Driving Distance
* K-Shortest Path, Multiple Alternative Paths **NEW**
* K-Dijkstra, One to Many Shortest Path **NEW**
* Traveling Sales Person **NEW Implementation**
* Turn Restriction Shortest Path (TRSP) **NEW**
* New functions for creating routing topology
* New functions for analyzing a graph for problems


## Migration Guide

pgRouting 2.0 is **not** backwards compatible with the 1.x version. This 
is a significant overhaul of the whole pgRouting environment and we have 
renamed all the functions and rationalized the arguments and return 
types. While this will be a painful migration for 1.x applications, we 
believe the new functionality, the high quality of the code, and new 
documentation will make it much easier to grow the product and support 
it over future releases.


## Source Code Download

See website: http://pgrouting.org/download.html

Packages for Ubuntu can be installed from the Launchpad repository: 
https://launchpad.net/~georepublic/+archive/pgrouting


### REQUIREMENTS

* C and C++ compilers
* Postgresql version = 8.4 (9.1 or higher recommended)
* PostGIS version = 1.5 (2.0 or higher recommended)
* The Boost Graph Library (BGL).
* CMake = 2.8.8
* (optional, for Driving Distance) CGAL
* (optional, for Documentation) Sphinx

You can download a zipfile from github via:
https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/archive/master.zip

Or you can clone the git repository and build it with:

git clone -b master https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting.git
cd pgrouting
mkdir build  cd build
cmake -DWITH_DOC=NO .
make
sudo make install
cd ..
tools/test-runner.pl


## More Resources:

* The pgRouting project website: http://pgrouting.org
* The new pgRouting documentation: http://docs.pgrouting.org
* An updated pgRouting workshop: http://workshop.pgrouting.org
* pgRouting support: http://pgrouting.org/support.html

## Thanks

Thank you to all of the users, developers, and supporters of pgRouting. 
We would like to call out special thanks to CSIS (University of Tokyo), 
Georepublic, Paragon Corporation, iMaptools.com and to Vicky Vergara for 
their time and support that really made this release possible. We also 
had a lot of support from our users testing releases, submitting 
patches, reporting issues and our apologies for not being able to list 
everyone by name but we do appreciate everyone's efforts.

Enjoy.

The pgRouting Team
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Would you be concerned if the GeoServices REST API became an OGC standard?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

The part that bothers me the most about this has to do with the big 
picture. I'm concerned that if we focus on this or that standard without 
putting it into the larger context that poor(bad?) decisions are getting 
made that set precedents for more bad decisions to follow.


This had been touched on buy the other responses. There are plenty of 
standards the are defacto because companies have published them and they 
have been widely adopted across their respective industry and this is 
goodness, but I'm not sure that it is justification for making it a 
standard unless it meets the goals and objects of the standard's body 
that wants to adopt it.


I think it would be very divisive to fracture and dilute the momentum 
that we have finally achieved with the WxS standards, unless there is 
clearly a need to grow beyond what exists today that can not be achieved 
by growing WxS in a compatible way.


-Steve

On 5/6/2013 11:11 AM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

I am also of the opinion that single-vendor standards such as KML and
this GeoServices REST API are turning OGC into a rubber-stamping
organization and this is not what the geospatial community needs. Don't
get me wrong, it is good to see these openly published, but the
publication should be by their owners (Google and ESRI in those case)
and not be rubber-stamped by OGC.

What the geospatial community needs is an organization that provides
direction around a consistent set of standards that guarantee
interoperability between interchangeable software components.

The suite of WxS services built over the last 10-15 years is somewhat on
the way of achieving this, even if some pieces still do not interoperate
as smoothly as we wish. Is OGC trying to tell the world that it no
longer believes in WxS?

OGC and its members need to decide whether they want the OGC logo to be
perceived as the guarantee of interoperability, or just as a
rubber-stamping organization with a large portfolio of inconsistent
standards.

Whether your source is open or closed is out of the question here, so I
am not sure that a statement from OSGeo matters unless it is to point at
this obvious slippery slope in which OGC is falling (a movement which
started with KML a few years ago).

Daniel



On 13-05-06 3:41 AM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:

All,
Having read this thread I support what has been said by Adrian, Bruce
and others. If anything, acceptance of a set of standards that
basically replicates what W*S standards already do will confuse
customers. Maybe that is exactly what esri hopes to achieve, it
definitely doesn't help our (the geospatial community) business. And
as Bruce states, it will have serious impact on the OGC credibility.
As OSGeo I can imagine that we then decide to start our own
standardization process and build a standards brand around OSGeo
products. Not a nice perspective, let's hope OGC won't go down that
route.
Jeroen

On 6 mei 2013, at 01:08, bruce.bannerman.osgeo
bruce.bannerman.os...@gmail.com wrote:


Cameron,

My personal opinion is that if this proposal was accepted, it would
be a bad move for OGC.

Remember that OGC is a community and its Technical Committee
membership are the people who vote on the acceptance of Standards.
The TC comprises many different organisations.


I do understand that OGC are trying to be inclusive in their
processes and to try and cater for alternative approaches to a
problem, much the same as OSGeo does in supporting multiple projects
that essentially handle similar use cases (e.g. GeoServer, MapServer
and Degree).

I have also personally witnessed ESRI's commitment to helping to
further the development of Open Spatial Standards through their work
on OGC Working Groups and at OGC Technical Committee meetings.

ESRI also have made a valid point in their response to the 'NO' vote
for the GeoServices REST API that the OGC has already allowed
alternate approaches with the acceptance of netCDF as a data format
and KML as a combined data/presentation format.

With the GeoServices REST API, I think that the approach proposed:

- is very divisive for the OGC community.
- essentially appears to propose an alternate way for working with
spatial services that does not utilise or build on the W*S suite of
services that have been developed through robust community processes
for in excess of a decade.
- does not provide REST bindings to the W*S suite of standards that
have been widely implemented in a range of software.
- will result in confusion within the user community that are trying
to utilise 'OGC' services.


If this approach were to be adopted, I believe that OGC will go too
far down the alternate solution approach and will risk losing its
public acceptance as one of the key leaders of open spatial standards.


I'm interested in hearing other OSGeo members opinions as to how this
proposal would affect their projects.

Would you consider implementing the GeoServices REST API within your
projects?

If you did, would you maintain support for 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Is Your Project In OSGeo Labs?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

HI Milo,

There are various initiatives related to Geocoding and it would be good 
if could share insights and resources. Some of the projects are:


http://www.pagcgeo.org/
http://www.postgis.org/  - has Tiger based geocoder
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OpenGeocoder  - list some of these and others
http://geocoder.us/
http://www.opengeocoder.net/ - some Microsoft employee
openstreetmap nominatim

The big differences between the various projects are based primarily on 
three dimensions:


1. Sources data ie: Tiger only, OpenStreetMap data, any data
2. Language and Geocoding Strategy
3. Licensing

Combining/collabation of efforts really depends a lot of the 
compatibility of these dimensions.


Package   DataSource(s) LanguageLicensing
---
pagcMultiple   C  MIT-X
Street segments
parcels
landmarks

postgis Tiger pgpsql  GPL2

geocoder.us Tiger  Perl   Perl

nominatim   OSM data??ODbl?
-

Pagc, postgis geocoder and geocoder.us all started out as Tiger data 
based geocoder and have expanded into other realms that use similar 
structured data. These projects have more in common with one another 
than any of them have with nominatim, unless I am terribly mistaken. 
That is not to say we should not collaborate only the data structures 
and strategies for querying them are very different.


For example, I just wrote a custom geocoder taking a small amount of 
code from pagc and wrapping it into a pgpsql stored procedure and then 
wrote a query planner in pgsql to do geocoding. I was able to load 50M 
records derived from Tiger, and index them in 6 hrs on a slow 4GB linux 
box and can geocode a table 216K addresses in about 44 ms per record. 
This is conceptually similar to the processes imployed by the postgis 
geocoder and by geocoder.us and for that matter a 2-3 other geocoders 
that I have worked with in the past that were not open source, one of 
them being a geocoder I wrote that only worked with the old Tiger/Line data.


I have looked at nominatim, a couple of times to try an understand the 
process, but it seems to be very tied to the OSM data structures and 
infrastructure. So if someone wants to setup a private nominatim service 
for a client, they basic need LOTS of iron, LOTS of disk, and need to 
mirror much/most?/all? of the OSM infrastructure. And the licensing 
needs to be approved by the client.


If I want to create a geocoder that works with Navteq data for a client 
that has access to that data, it is pretty easy for me to load the data 
into PAGC, or the geocoder I just wrote, or even the postgis or 
geocoder.us code with a little massaging of the data. I'm not sure where 
I would start with the nominatim code.


OK, I admit that the failure here is my knowledge about Nominatim and/or 
maybe that Nominatim/OpenStreetMap are not interested in solving the use 
cases that I presented.


Sorry, I have gotten off on a rant. Back to your point about joining 
forces, I'm ok with, but I'm not sure where to start. I think I outlined 
the problem as I see it, but some additional information related to 
Nominatim could help me get beyond my biases if I can see how we can 
successfully collaborate.


Best regards,
  -Steve

On 12/8/2012 5:19 AM, Milo van der Linden wrote:

Would it be good if opengeocoder joins forces with openstreetmap nominatim?

Op 29 nov. 2012 03:05 schreef Stephen Woodbridge
wood...@swoodbridge.com mailto:wood...@swoodbridge.com het volgende:

On 11/28/2012 7:31 PM, Landon Blake wrote:

I'm in the process of trying to take over as the steward for OSGeo
Labs as part of my duties with the OSGeo Incubation Committee.
As part
of this process I'd like to get a handle on the projects that
are in
labs. There is a short list of stable and young and experimental
projects on the current Labs wiki page. Since I'm editing that page
today, here is the list:

Stable Projects:
- GeoWebCache
- pgRouting

Young and Experimental Projects
- GeoExt
- GeoFunctions
- Geoinformatica


I think these are more or less mine:

- OpenGeocoder
- OpenRouter


There is an OpenGeocoderRouter list that I started but there is no
viable activity on it at this time.

OpenRouter is a project related to internet routing. I started
OpenGraphRouter using a GSoC project to get started. The goal was to
create a routing solution that was MIT-X licensed instead of GPL. We
have sine joined forces with pgRouting and are developing the code
that is MIT-X algorithms, which can

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Is Your Project In OSGeo Labs?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 11/28/2012 7:31 PM, Landon Blake wrote:

I'm in the process of trying to take over as the steward for OSGeo
Labs as part of my duties with the OSGeo Incubation Committee. As part
of this process I'd like to get a handle on the projects that are in
labs. There is a short list of stable and young and experimental
projects on the current Labs wiki page. Since I'm editing that page
today, here is the list:

Stable Projects:
- GeoWebCache
- pgRouting

Young and Experimental Projects
- GeoExt
- GeoFunctions
- Geoinformatica


I think these are more or less mine:


- OpenGeocoder
- OpenRouter


There is an OpenGeocoderRouter list that I started but there is no 
viable activity on it at this time.


OpenRouter is a project related to internet routing. I started 
OpenGraphRouter using a GSoC project to get started. The goal was to 
create a routing solution that was MIT-X licensed instead of GPL. We 
have sine joined forces with pgRouting and are developing the code that 
is MIT-X algorithms, which can be bundled with pgRouting effectively 
making them dual licensed.


OpenGeocoder.net appears to be Steve Coast @ Microsoft and not related 
to OSGeo stuff.


http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OpenGeocoder never got off the ground, but I 
have been working with PAGC over the last few years. Our big issue at 
the moment is addressing some serious performance issues when you scale 
up from county level data sets to national data sets. Basically it is 
just me and Walter, the developer, working behind the scenes on these 
technical issues. Once these are resolved I hope to see if we can some 
activity going again with this.


On a side note, I have take the address standardizer from PAGC, built it 
as a library and wrapped it into a postgresql stored procedure 
extension. Based on that I have prototyped up a Tiger geocoder that 
works very well and is very fast. I'm still work on various things so it 
is not ready for prime time but this might eventually become OpenSource 
also.


I'm not sure what it means or how you get a project like these in labs 
but these are mostly orphaned except I have an interest in them and will 
respond to queries about them.


Thanks,
  -Steve


- Grids
- OSGeo Graphics
- pycsw
- OWSLib
- SemanticGeo
- ZOO-Project

Can you please let me know if you are involved with one of these
projects? I'm trying to determine which projects are in labs, and
then establish a point of contact with each project so I can help them
get ready for official incubation.

Thanks.

Landon

P.S. - If you have thoughts on the purpose and work of OSGeo Labs,
please let me know. I have my own vision, but I'd like to get feedback
from other OSGeo members.
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Printing SHP

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 11/18/2012 8:48 PM, Frans Thamura wrote:

hi

Any idea to make it like condole rathe wb based?


This might give you a clue:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-dev/2010-July/006284.html

It might be possible to render it to svg if you are using mapserver with 
6.2 that was just released, as another option.


-Steve W



On Nov 18, 2012 5:29 PM, K S Rajan ra...@iiit.ac.in
mailto:ra...@iiit.ac.in wrote:

Try using LSIViewer @ http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/lsi/lsiviewer/
and export the file as SVG for embedding into Ilustrator or any
other app.
-Rajan


On 18-11-2012 09:01, Frans Thamura wrote:

hi all

any one can help me?

how to print a shp or a map to a printing material, or better to
vector editing like ilustrator, so we can add something to map, to
make printing map better and more marketing


F


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--
1. Please use VRGeo.in (http://vrgeo.in) - the Collaborative Mapping 
Platform for Researchers and All
2. OSGeo-India announces the 1st National FOSS4G-India Conference, Oct 
25-27, 2012 @ IIIT, Hyderabad. WebPagehttp://lsi.iiit.ac.in/foss4gindia
--
K S Rajan, Ph.D.

Head, Lab for Spatial Informatics,
Associate Professor,
International Institute of Information Technology
Gachibowli, Hyderabad 500032, Andhra Pradesh, India
Tel:(+91-40)6653 1276  tel:%28%2B91-40%296653%201276
Fax:(+91-40)6653 1413  tel:%28%2B91-40%296653%201413
E-mail:ra...@iiit.ac.in  mailto:ra...@iiit.ac.in

GeoLocation: 17.4454 N, 78.3503 E


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[OSGeo-Discuss] Very cool wind map

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

I thought you might be interested in checking this out.

http://hint.fm/wind/

It is a very cool animated wind map of the US. I haven't look at the 
implementation but thought it was worth sharing.


-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] African universities on google maps

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 9/21/2012 9:09 AM, Anne Ghisla wrote:

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:49:21 +0100
Barry Rowlingson b.rowling...@lancaster.ac.uk wrote:


This just disturbed me:

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v6/newsworld.php?id=694668

NAIROBI, Sept 14 (BERNAMA-NNN-KBC) -- Students from more than 90
universities in 12 sub-Saharan African countries have come together
for a two-week mapping exercise to put their university campuses and
surrounding areas on Google Map.

  Are we all now shouting Why not OpenStreetMap? at our screens?
Maybe the data can be used in OSM as well, I'm not sure what TCs are
imposed on user-supplied Google Map data...


 From my understanding of Google Maps TOS
http://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html

it is forbidden to (2b) redistribute, sublicense, rent, publish, sell,
assign, lease, market, transfer, or otherwise make the Products or
Content available to third parties, and (2g) use the Products to create
a database of places or other local listings information.

So I would say that is impossible to take the user contribted data from
Google Maps and import them into OSM. The alternative is to do the
mapping again in OSM...


Thank maybe the ideal situation is for them to add their tracks to OSM 
maps first and then add their tracks to google maps. Since it their 
tracks, I do not think they loose ownership by contributing them to a 
project, the they may loose ownership of the data IN the project that 
they contributed to and therefore may not be able to use the data as 
reference out of the contributed project.


IANAL, but that would be my take on it.

-Steve

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Should we write a FOSS4G Cookbook?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hello,

I think the 'cookbook' is a great idea! It is about capturing our 
collective knowledge and experience, it not about limiting creativity or 
change. Just like in software when you have an individual contributor 
that has passion, vision and drive can create wonderful things, you also 
have to help the other contributors that are not so visionary to do a 
good job. The 'cookbook' gives us a recipe for success, it is the basic 
stuff that you need to know to get the job done successfully. To 
continue with the analogy a visionary chef looks at the recipe and 
changes it to suit his creative talents.


So it all depends on whether we require people to only follow the 
recipe or we use it as a guideline for people that are volunteering to 
help but may not have had past experience to get things done correctly.


The cookbook is a great idea in my opinion.

-Steve W

On 9/6/2012 10:14 AM, Jeff McKenna wrote:

Hello Cameron,

Making sure that a transfer of knowledge happens from one FOSS4G local
committee to the next is something that I've championed for a very long
time now - it is a thankless invisible task that not many are aware is
happening (archiving documents, pinging committee members over and over
to openly archive documents and logos and files, making sure such
critical parts of FOSS4G are kept - ribbon in logo, t-shirts for
attendees, hands-on workshops - to the point that local committees kind
of become annoyed with me).

My vision of FOSS4G (credit here to original FOSS4G Heroes such as
Venka and Markus of course) has always been very simple: to spread the
Open Source Geospatial passion all around the world.  It has not been
about money or politics.  The result has been FOSS4G local committees
are free to take this passion and mold it into their own vision.  Events
such as FOSS4G Cape Town in 2008 are proof of this.

I worry that such a 'cookbook' will hinder this open passion and vision
for a local committee.

The first drafts of such a cookbook came many years ago from Paul
Ramsey, from his 2007 experiences.  Since then I've heard rumblings from
Arnulf, Cameron and others.

I guess it is time for such guidelines.  For sure we need a conference
Content Management System internal to OSGeo that is required for all
FOSS4G local committees to use (not external systems such as Basecamp);
this is critical.


-jeff





On 12-09-05 7:34 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:

In analysing the downfall of FOSS4G 2012 [1] one of the key lessons that
became apparent to me is that we are not very efficient at passing on
Lessons Learned from one conference to the next.

Could we do a better job of knowledge transfer by building an OSGeo
Conference Body of Knowledge? Something like a FOSS4G Cookbook [2]?

If so, what should be the scope of the cookbook? Should it only be for
the international FOSS4G event? Should it cover regional conferences
too? Should it also cover FOSS4G steams in other conferences?

Who thinks this idea is important enough that you would like to help
write sections of the Cookbook, or help with editing?

What format should we use to write the Cookbook? Maybe a wiki?

I'm interested to help push this idea forward if we as a community think
that there will be value in such a collaboratively edited document.

If you have an interest, please respond on the OSGeo conference_dev
email list (rather than OSGeo Discuss)

[1]
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/analysing-downfall-of-foss4g-2012.html

[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Cookbook
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Did anyone else see this article on OSGeo?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

The writer has a feedback link at the bottom of the article. I think it 
is time to educate him about support. He obviously needs everyone here 
to tell him that each of us are support, and give him links to the 
various support lists, advocates, and companies that are supporting and 
co-developing the software.


One person can do this, but it would be more convincing if everyone did 
it, because that shows the depth of support that the community has to offer.


-Steve W

PS: This is on my own todo list.

On 7/10/2012 12:47 PM, Anne Ghisla wrote:

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Paolo Cavallini cavall...@faunalia.it wrote:

Il 09/07/2012 23:19, Landon Blake ha scritto:

It was in GPS World:

http://www.gpsworld.com/gis/gss-weekly/open-source-gis-12997?utm_source=GSSutm_medium=emailutm_campaign=Geospatial-Weekly_05_17_2012utm_content=open-source-gis-12997


pity for the usual FUD about lack of support.
thanks for letting us know.


Yes, once more the reader is told that there is no valid support.
Maybe because the writer actually means people you can phone at night
and simply tell that the software is broken. It seems to me that this
kind of support assumes that the user doesn't know how the system
works, or worse, that it is normal that the user doesn't want to know.
I think that there are many issues with open source software that
require only few time of googling and a couple of emails to get to a
solution, and that in many cases the software is not so critical for a
person/company. If so, there are companies providing support So in the
end I think the article looks unnecessarily frightening at a
superficial read, and continues with the open source is for hackers
stereotype.

This readings urges me to continue spreading the word about FOSS[GIS]
and help users to become more conscious and informed wrt software
choice.

Best,
Anne
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Charter Member Nomination: Thomas Bonfort

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi,

I would like to nominate Thomas Bonfort for OSGeo Charter Member.

Thomas has been a long time active supporter of the Open Source GIS 
movement. He developed mod_geocache which has since been merged with 
mapserver as mapcache, he is an active developer of mapserver and 
recently taken on the responsibility for the latest mapserver release in 
the works.


Thomas has presented in various FOSS4G conferences and is constructive 
and a great team player. I think Thomas would make an excellent OSGeo 
Charter Member.


Best regards,
  -Stephen Woodbridge
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Google announces full offline mapping mode for Android smartphones

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I thought this might be of interest to people here:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/google-announces-full-offline-mapping-mode-for-android-smartphones/7744?tag=nl.e550

-Steve Woodbridge
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Future perspectives for OSGeo

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 5/2/2012 1:32 PM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:

Il 02/05/2012 19:04, Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) ha scritto:

We see new opportunities by starting joint activities with the Eclipse
foundation - which is in the process of spawning activities explicitly
focused on geospatial. They have lots of high level contacts but lack a
noteworthy community. This is where we in turn did exceptionally well,
we are perceived as *the* global voice for open source geospatial.

Hi Arnulf.
Thanks for your thoughts and work. As everybody knows, the free GIS
community is unfortunately split, more or less deeply, in two tribes
(C/C++ and Java). I must admit I do not know the Eclipse community very
well, so my words could be inappropriate, but given the presumably
strong tie between Eclipse and Java, I am slightly worried that the move
you propose would make OSGeo perceived as more Java-inclined. Being the
global voice, as you pointed out, is OSGeo strength, and should not be
missed.
All the best.



Paolo,

You make a very good point that we should not sway to far from being the 
global voice. And to that end and the success of OSGeo, we need to be 
inclusive. Working with a partner like Eclipse is fine, we should not 
turn it down, but likewise we need to find other partners to be successful.


I have been in too many corporation where they had a few very large 
customers and very bad things happened if they lost one of these 
customers because of the level of dependence on it. We need broad-based 
support and relationships. I would rather have 100 customers supporting 
use at $100/year than one customer giving us $10,000/year. Change the 
numbers to fit the business model but I think you get the idea. It 
would/is very hard to replace the support we are getting from AutoDesk.


Both models have their problems, but it all starts with signing up 
clients one at a time.


All the best,
  -Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Need for to to convert/deconstruct a shapefile to create a relational table

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 3/18/2012 7:50 PM, Simon Cropper wrote:

On 17/03/12 00:06, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

On 3/16/2012 12:52 AM, Simon Cropper wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone know of a simple means to take a shapefile and create a
either a SQLite or xBase table?

Essentially it is taking an attached attribute table, inserting the
coordinates in a field and saving the new file in a designated format.

Most of the data being converted is point data or fixed area samples.
Ideally the converter could record the centroid for grid cells with
details of the furthest point.

I know of various tools that can do this 'manually' one step at a time
but as I have many files that come regularly, I would like to somehow
automate the process.



I think ogr2ogr that is part of the GDAL release will do this.

-Steve W
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Unfortunately ogr2ogr transfers data from one format to another but
maintains the geospatial data separate from the attribute table.

So if you have a shape file and export to sqlite for example you end up
with one table with the attribute data and the other with the geospatial
data. If you export to CSV only the attribute data gets converted -- no
spatial data is bundled with the info.

I know you can use SQL but you can't easily access the geometry table
data using ogr2ogr.

What I need is select data.*, geometry.lat, geometry.long from data,
geometry where data.siteid==geometry.siteid into newtable but I can't
seem to access the spatial data in the shapefile in this way and have
the data exported into a simple flat table (DBF, CSV).

I tried to see if I could convert to SQLite then export from there but
the geometry data is stored as a blob field.


Does this get you any closer to what you need:

SELECT OGR_GEOM_WKT, * FROM data;

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Need for to to convert/deconstruct a shapefile to create a relational table

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 3/16/2012 12:52 AM, Simon Cropper wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone know of a simple means to take a shapefile and create a
either a SQLite or xBase table?

Essentially it is taking an attached attribute table, inserting the
coordinates in a field and saving the new file in a designated format.

Most of the data being converted is point data or fixed area samples.
Ideally the converter could record the centroid for grid cells with
details of the furthest point.

I know of various tools that can do this 'manually' one step at a time
but as I have many files that come regularly, I would like to somehow
automate the process.



I think ogr2ogr that is part of the GDAL release will do this.

-Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Automatic geocoding of PDF documents

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Here are some more links that you might find useful.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/385
http://www.ijcte.org/papers/005.pdf
http://www.e-perimetron.org/Vol_4_1/Martins_et_al.pdf
http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/book/ch07.html

I can not find a potentially excelent reference that was done by about 5 
years ago by maybe a GSoC student that I think then hired on with 
Google, but the basically he wrote a document parser that looked for 
location references in the text and then tagged the document with 
locations and lat/longs. If I remember correctly it as a gazetteer based 
system and it is open source and was online somewhere also.


-Steve

On 1/13/2012 6:00 PM, slesage wrote:

Hi,

does anybody knows about some opensource software dedicated to automatic
geocoding of text documents ? The idea of that black box would be:
* give, as an input, a text document or a PDF,
* receive, as an output, a list of place names with their coordinates /
a map of POI corresponding to that places.

Using the geonames database (http://www.geonames.org/), the solution
appears to be only a fulltext search, that could be done using Lucene
(https://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/index.html).

I found the metacarta solution
(http://www.metacarta.com/products-platform-geotag.htm) but couldn't
find any opensource solution.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Sylvain Lesage.
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Automatic geocoding of PDF documents

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Ahhh! found the reference I was looking for. This will show relevant links:

https://www.google.com/#q=geo+search+egnor

Hope this is useful.

-Steve

On 1/17/2012 11:58 AM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Here are some more links that you might find useful.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/385
http://www.ijcte.org/papers/005.pdf
http://www.e-perimetron.org/Vol_4_1/Martins_et_al.pdf
http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/book/ch07.html

I can not find a potentially excelent reference that was done by about 5
years ago by maybe a GSoC student that I think then hired on with
Google, but the basically he wrote a document parser that looked for
location references in the text and then tagged the document with
locations and lat/longs. If I remember correctly it as a gazetteer based
system and it is open source and was online somewhere also.

-Steve

On 1/13/2012 6:00 PM, slesage wrote:

Hi,

does anybody knows about some opensource software dedicated to automatic
geocoding of text documents ? The idea of that black box would be:
* give, as an input, a text document or a PDF,
* receive, as an output, a list of place names with their coordinates /
a map of POI corresponding to that places.

Using the geonames database (http://www.geonames.org/), the solution
appears to be only a fulltext search, that could be done using Lucene
(https://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/index.html).

I found the metacarta solution
(http://www.metacarta.com/products-platform-geotag.htm) but couldn't
find any opensource solution.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Sylvain Lesage.
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Automatic geocoding of PDF documents

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 1/17/2012 2:51 PM, Arnie Shore wrote:

I wonder if someone can describe what's seen as the
tall-pole-in-the-tent here, difficulty-wise.


Arnie,

I think that there is no simple answer to this because it is largely 
defined by the specific requirements.


If your problem is scanning text and extracting location references, 
then the problem is based on how do you recognize locations in a text 
document?, how do you deal with languages?, how do you use context to 
disambiguate locations?, etc, and then how do you geocode it?.


For the geocoding part, what are you geocoding? eg, addresses, 
intersections, placenames, postal codes, landmarks, parcel data, 
geography names, historical names? and do you have good reference data 
for these? What is your reference data set?, how accurate/complete is 
it?, how do you standardize it?, how do you standardize you input 
locations? Are there different standardization rules for different types 
of data? For addresses in different countries? Fuzzy searching is 
another area of expertise that can be deployed in this problem area 
which has its one set of issues with respect to the specific requirements.


Between dealing with natural language issues, idiomatic and slang 
references, local knowledge issues, spelling abbreviations and errors 
and reference data errors and missing data and how these interact is 
probably one of the harder issues.


I'm not sure there is one long pole, more like 5-6 long poles ;-)

-Steve
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[OSGeo-Discuss] US National Historical GIS Site

[Stephen Woodbridge]

I just found this site and thought it might be of interest to others.

National Historical GIS

The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides, 
free of charge, aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files 
for the United States between 1790 and 2010.


https://www.nhgis.org

Enjoy,
  -Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Charter Member Nomination: Stephen Woodbridge

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi All,

Many thanks to Dan Putler and Daniel Kastl for their nomination of me.

I have been passionately involved in programming and algorithms since I 
was 14 when I took a summer course in Fortran II at Swathmore College. 
Yes, I am that old! :) I have been involved in development as a 
programmer, manager, QA manager, project manager, marketing manager, but 
10 years ago I got tired of corporate life and went back to programming 
and consulting on my own. At that time, I wrote my own prototype 
mapserver and then I ran into Mapserver. I decide it made more sense 
work with it and found the world of OpenSource. From mapserver, I have 
spread into working with many of the OSGeo projects and many of the not 
yet big enough for incubation projects.


I am on the PSC for Mapserver, PAGC, and pgRouting and actively involved 
with using other projects like mod_geocache (now mapcache), OpenLayers, 
PostGIS, and GDAL/OGR. I also have been a Google Summer of Code Mentor 
for the last three years for pgRouting projects. I try to bring a few 
things to each of the communities that I interact with:


1. I try to help users by answering questions and being constructive, 
with the intent that if I can answer it then that frees up the more 
important staff to focus on programing and other project activities.


2. My many years of corporate life taught me much about the software 
development process and more importantly that projects have products and 
users and we need to think about them when we make decisions in a 
project. I try to be a user advocate.


3. As a user of these projects, I am constantly trying to make them 
better and easier to use. So I report bugs, encourage others to report 
bugs, recommend enhancements, provide use cases, and occasionally 
provide patches, answer other use questions, etc.


I am passionate about all the products I use, I advocate them to my 
clients and recommend they fund development projects when they have 
needs. I like to share my enthusiasm and ideas with others.


The bottom line for me is that I would be honored to be elected as a 
charter member, but regardless of that, I enjoy doing what I'm doing, I 
love solving problems and helping our community grow. I am interested in 
being able to do more for OSGeo.


We have a great slate of candidates and I know many of them and they 
would all be great additions to the OSGeo ranks in my opinion.


Thank you and best regards,
  -Steve Woodbridge

On 11/14/2011 11:19 AM, Dan Putler wrote:

Hi all,

We, Dan Putler and Daniel Kastl, are nominating Stephen Woodbridge to be
a Charter Member of OSGeo. We have both worked with Steve as part of a
project team, Daniel Kastl on pgRouting and Dan Putler on PAGC. We have
both found him to be an outstanding colleague and important contributor
to these projects.

Steve is one of the original, and on going, members of the Project
Steering Committee of the MapServer Project. He is also a member of the
Project Steering Committees of pgRouting and PAGC. In addition, he has
acted for several years as a mentor to Google Summer of Code students
who have worked on OSGeo Summer of Code projects.

In addition to the projects he is directly involved in, Steve has been a
important contributor to the user mailing lists of several other
projects. We feel his helpfulness to other participants on the
PostGIS-Users mailing list is particularly noteworthy, but he is an
important (and helpful) contributor to other lists as well.

Given his contributions to geospatial FOSS software and users of that
software, we believe that Steve would be a worthy Charter Member of OSGeo.

Dan and Daniel

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[OSGeo-Discuss] Handouts for FOSS4G presentation?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Does anyone know what the process is for handouts for FOSS4G 
presentations? Is the conference making copies for the audience? Do the 
presenters need to make copies? How do we know how many to make if we 
need to do this?


Is the conference collecting presentations to put online or to publish? 
Who should we get the presentation to? in what format? by when?


Sorry if this info has been already published somewhere, but I do not 
remember see it so a pointer to it would be good.


Thanks,
  Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Certification only; stay out of training :-)

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 6/13/2011 4:41 AM, Jody Garnett wrote:

Indeed the main benefit of certification here would be as an income
draw to keep
OSGeo going.

This is also interesting: currently we are using the surplus from
courses to partly
finance our (mainly QGIS) development. I do not think redirecting
these resources to
OSGeo would be a clever think to do. There is scope for competition
between OSGeo and
individual project, which is no good.

I don't think anybody is interested in the foundation competing with
existing training courses. (Indeed training is one of the few places
where any cost recovery on the udig project occurs).

That said if you don't want OSGeo competing in training - how would you
like to pay for the foundation? I am not sure if your organisation
sponsors OSGeo? I don't think my employer does (preferring to volunteer
marketing effort); and I don't personally sponsor the foundation
(preferring volunteer effort myself).

So this is the nice part about certification:
- it would make your training courses stronger (ie more attractive to
customers)
- it makes training an easier thing to sell (take training as one step
towards getting ready for certification)
- it would make QGIS more attractive (as a technology in which
certification was available)
- it provides the foundation with a revenue stream that does not compete
with any of the member organisations
(Indeed certification is a service that very few organisations could
offer credibly?)

 From the QGIS standpoint the benefit for you really is focused on those
first couple of points; certifications would be an additional activity
the foundation could perform that would make your training courses more
valuable.

My own thoughts on this (using your project as an example):

1. Testing criteria
- organisations offering QGSI training are asked to supply criteria to
use for the certification process
(If your organisation wants to be involved this is where you would take
part)
- the foundation pays for someone to write the test material for a
specific qgis release (perhaps you? perhaps another vendor?)
- the test is passed around to those supplying QGIS certification
criteria for review; production of an answer key etc...

2. Next time you do a training course
- offer your customer the option of either:
a) taking the certification tests at a later date (you can pass on the
foundation contact details; and get a 30% cut in thanks for the referral)
b) arranging for a bulk purchase where you can offer your customer a
discount for doing it then and their (perhaps give the customer a 20%
discount to make it more attractive). You would need to play with the
numbers to make this attractive (so customers don't just ordering the
test for their top people).

3. Each month the foundation hires one of the organisation that defined
the testing criteria to mark the tests
a) a month is chosen to have enough tests together in one spot to make
effective use of time
b) the organisation hired should be a set rotation to be fair
c) the organisation hired should probably not be responsible for the
training of any of the students being marked in order to keep this as
independent as possible

4. Marking should be brutal
a) the idea is to force a spread so that potential employers can
actually respect the certification
b) cover open source activities (bug submission, contribution to
documentation, participation on the user list). If it is any kind of
advanced certification this goes into building the application from
source code, applying a patch and building locally (can submit a screen
snap of the result), links to accepted submissions etc...
c) How brutal? How about if they get everything right they end up with
80%; the last 10% is there to allow markers to recognise outstanding
d) if you really want to soften the blow you can provide different
levels of certification out of the same test (confusion may not be worth
it; easier to fail people and ask them to try again)

5. Updates to certification should be cheaper and repeatable
a) as each release comes out the certification criteria should be updated
b) a cheaper rate for repeat customers should be available - to
encourage this both as a revenue stream - and as a certification process
that employers can trust to be update to date. Why hire someone
certified in QGIS 1.6 when QGIS 3 has been released?
c) the cheaper rate should also be available to those repeating the same
test (partly to soften the blow due to the expected failure rate)

The other scenario for using the certification tests is:

3) Next time you hire someone
a) Buy a bulk purchase of tests
b) Ask applicants to take the test; and submit review (this is nice for
them because it is on your dime; and nice for you as you get an
objective evaluation)
c) The foundation arranges for someone to mark this pronto as part of
the service; probably only returning details on the top five candidates
d) The foundation could change more to access test results in detail

The final 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Training and certification

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 6/10/2011 3:08 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote:

On 10/06/2011 4:07 PM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:

Il 09/06/2011 21:38, Tyler Mitchell ha scritto:


Anyone else thinking about this or want to weigh-in on what their
thoughts were?

If this competes with the activities the professionals and enterprises
are currently
offering, -1. We want OSGeo to support our work, not to compete with
it. This would
have a number of negative consequences, IMHO.
All the best.


Like Paolo, I'm very nervous about OSGeo taking on a training role for
the same reasons.
Providing good training is a difficult business, which is provided by
many of the OSGeo businesses who back OSGeo. If OSGeo starts to act as a
business by providing such training, then OSGeo will start competing
against its' core supporters. This has the potential to fracture the
very strong OSGeo community, which is a bad thing.

And while in principle, the idea of OSGeo providing a trusted, unbiased
training certification program, I think a very quick review of the
business case behind it will make it unfavourable. Either the training
program will be of low quality and low credibility, or it will attach
such high cost to courses that the courses will be harder to sell.

Creating certification takes a lot of work, which needs to be resourced.
I might be wrong, but I can't see volunteers stepping forward to build a
certification program, at least not in the immediate future. Maybe some
Governments might step up (as has been done for certifying OGC
standards), but I expect governments will have better things to spend
money on. The other group who could write a certification program are
training organisations themselves. But I don't think these training
organisations are likely to make much extra money with a certification
in place. And I don't think trainees are likely prepared to pay an extra
30% for their course in order to see a certification stamp. (And that
30% is just to pay for certification development, before OSGeo makes a
profit).

I'd like to be proven wrong, but I don't think we are ready for OSGeo
certification, and I think it is bad business for OSGeo to compete with
OSGeo companies by providing training directly.



Cameron,

These are good points, but I think they over look the fact that as a 
community we all pitch in to fill gaps in the ecosystem. Some do 
training, some do development, etc. Part of the maturing of OSGeo is 
that fact that there will have to be some structural changes to the 
ecosystem. Hopefully this is done in such a way the our partners can 
accommodate and grow with us so it is a win-win and not a zero sum game.


Nobody likes change, but change is how we grow and it is necessary, and 
I totally agree that it needs to be worked out with our business 
partners and supporter where ever it can be.


-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Help building a tile cache from a large dataset of orthophotos

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 6/10/2011 9:29 AM, Giovanni Manghi wrote:




Can somebody suggest an open source tool that can produce a tile cache
that can be consumed by ArcGIS server 9.3.1?


Tilecache (tilecache.org)? Then if Arc can consume wms-c services your
are good to go.


You might want to look at mod_geocache[1] which supports protocols for 
WMS, WMTS, TMS, VirtualEarth/Bing and Gmaps requests. It runs as an 
apache2 module or as a fast-cgi executable.


[1] http://code.google.com/p/mod-geocache/

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open StreamMap?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 5/27/2011 9:51 PM, Charlie Schweik wrote:

Hi,

I find myself wondering if there is a possibility of starting an open
stream map project in a similar way to open street map? With the idea
that this might be connected to an invasive plant species effort too...

It is an interesting idea -- roads are relatively stable. Streams have
additional attributes, like water levels.

Any reactions or ideas on how this might be started?


You might start with DEMs and analyze them for V like paths that 
represent drainage in the terrain. This would give you a starting place. 
Then I suppose you could recruit people that like to hike to collect GPS 
tracks along rivers, streams, ponds and lakes and enter that into a OSM 
server designed to work with hydrology models.


-Steve W
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Looking for map matching software

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

Do we have any good map matching code around? I looking for something 
that does more than simple snapping of points to nearest segments. I 
have read tons of academic papers and played around with some simple 
algorithms in postGIS. I have the road network loaded in pgRouting.


Is anyone working on this? or have a working solutions that they are 
willing to share.


Thanks,
  -Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Looking for map matching software

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 5/9/2011 11:58 PM, Tyler Mitchell wrote:

On 2011-05-09, at 8:36 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Do we have any good map matching code around? I looking for something that does 
more than simple snapping of points to nearest segments. I have read tons of 
academic papers and played around with some simple algorithms in postGIS. I 
have the road network loaded in pgRouting.


Are you looking for more than just conflation then?


Yes. The problem with just snapping points to the network, is that it 
does not take into account the underlying topology of the network or the 
fact that snapping to the nearest segment may not be the right choice 5 
or 10 sample in the future. Thing about the problem of a long exit ramp 
paralleling a highway. You may not be certain if you are on the highway 
or the ramp until there is a significant deviation from your assumed 
path and the future tracking of the GPS points.


My end result needs to be a valid and probably path that the vehicle 
traveled. There will be potential errors with respect to the actual path 
traveled, the the computed path needs to be reasonable, drivable with 
respect to the underlying network topology.


Thanks,
  -Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Finding position based on horizon profile?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

These all are pretty cool, but all seem to work based on knowing the 
current location, which is is the unknown in Michael's hypothetical 
problem. But that said some of the tech behind these tools might be 
useful in comparing photo to a potential reference image.


This is a very interesting and intriguing problem.

-Steve

On 3/29/2011 10:28 AM, Mr. Puneet Kishor wrote:


On Mar 29, 2011, at 9:23 AM, Ian Turton wrote:


On 28 March 2011 16:48, Michael P. Gerlekm...@flaxen.com  wrote:

Consider the following hypothetical problem:

Assume we have a good elevation data set for a large region of
the earth -- say, an entire mountain range.  Now let's say we
have a photograph taken from the ground, the horizon of which
shows the profile of a couple of the mountains in that range.
Can you tell me where the photograph was taken from?

Any pointers to research in this area would be appreciated.


I think that http://www.heywhatsthat.com/ does some of  what you
want. I'm on a very slow hotel internet connection so I can't
actually get it to load just now. But my Delicious tags seem to
indicate it's an answer.



Yes, that is the one I have been thinking of since the start of this
thread. Thanks Ian, for suggesting heywhatsthat.com. It was pointed
out either on this list or on geowanking a long time ago, and I just
couldn't remember it. It is pretty cool.

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Finding position based on horizon profile?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 3/28/2011 4:48 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

Consider the following hypothetical problem:

Assume we have a good elevation data set for a large region of the earth --
say, an entire mountain range.  Now let's say we have a photograph taken
from the ground, the horizon of which shows the profile of a couple of the
mountains in that range.  Can you tell me where the photograph was taken
from?

Any pointers to research in this area would be appreciated.


Micheal,

Does this help?
http://www.google.com/#q=matching++terrain+profile;

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Finding position based on horizon profile?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Ok, after thinking about this a little and doing some more googling 
about. It is hard to find the right terms for this question. Anyway this 
is one approach that I thought of.


Given that you had a constrained area - what ever that might be.
You might generate horizon profiles of the area based on prominent peaks 
or features, by viewing those areas from outside the area of interest. 
The goal being to generate wireframe profiles of the ridges and 
mountains in say N-degree steps about the prominent feature. These would 
all get stored for future reference.


Now given a photograph, identify the horizon and any other significant 
terrain features as wire frames.


Now try to match these against the sample references created above. This 
will need to be done very approximately like just matching peaks and 
allowing for horizontal spread based on point of view distance and 
relative height differences from the reference perspective and the 
camera perspective. The idea here is to narrow the field of possible 
perspective images from 1000's to 100's.


This matching might be achieved by doing a linear regression that can 
only distort your image profiles by stretching/compressing the image 
horizontally and/or vertically and computing a least square fit against 
the reference. You would want to keep the images centers aligned 
right-left because you are trying to fine the reference image the best 
aligns with your image because this will give you the heading onto which 
you can then dos more detailed analysis. You can slide the images 
up-down relative to one another. Or try to analyze matching prominent 
features in the profile that match right-left from center.


Then a detailed analysis of this smaller number of possible viewing 
angles and be analyzed. If you can uniquely identify 2-3 features, then 
it should be possible to analyze the distance between them and their 
relative heights and widths to compute heading, distance and azimuth of 
the camera that you could then try to place more accurately on your DEM.


Anyway, having never done anything like this, this would be how I would 
approach it without additional research to direct me in another direction.


-Steve

On 3/28/2011 5:27 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

Well, yes, I did do that first and have some angles on the more conventional
aspects of this, e.g. missile guidance.  Being new to this area, though, I
thought I'd put out a query to see what else might turn up in the open
source realm (pure RD being one thing; hackable code is something quite
different sometimes).

[that said, sometimes it's hard to even frame the right questions when one
is in a brand new area..]

-mpg



-Original Message-
From: Stephen Woodbridge [mailto:wood...@swoodbridge.com]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 2:16 PM
To: m...@flaxen.com; OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Finding position based on horizon profile?

On 3/28/2011 4:48 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:

Consider the following hypothetical problem:

Assume we have a good elevation data set for a large region of the
earth -- say, an entire mountain range.  Now let's say we have a
photograph taken from the ground, the horizon of which shows the
profile of a couple of the mountains in that range.  Can you tell me
where the photograph was taken from?

Any pointers to research in this area would be appreciated.


Micheal,

Does this help?
http://www.google.com/#q=matching++terrain+profile;

-Steve




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[OSGeo-Discuss] New System May Disrupt GPS Signals

[Stephen Woodbridge]

This is very disturbing if it is approved!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/7/obama-to-america-get-lost/

new system will disrupt GPS signals.

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [Live-demo] Has anyone written a How do you XXX with Open Source GIS?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 2/2/2011 5:14 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote:

Below, Frank has done a great job asking the exact sort of question that
new GIS users ask, and which we as an OSGeo community should address to
attract new users.


I think that it would be helpful to identify gaps also, for two reasons:

1. if someone is planning to migrate from say ArcMap to OSS, know the 
pain points and gaps will make it easy fro them to decide if their use 
case makes sense of not to convert now or not. Knowing what to expect up 
front lets them plan better and design new processes to work around 
those issues.


2. if we as a community have a clear idea of the gaps and pain points 
then it gives us a check list if high value projects that we might want 
to work into our projects. While I suspect most projects maintain some 
kind of wish list, I do not think there is a high level document like 
this FAQ that covers this. Maybe it is as simple as creating additional 
entries like How to you XXX with Open Source GIS? which identify gaps 
and pain points also.


I think we are all about transparency, and this would help, IMHO.

ATB,
  -Steve W


What has been done so far toward building a FAQ on How to you XXX with
Open Source GIS??

Frank wrote:

Not only am I new to the forum, but
I'm new to GIS work in general.

I downloaded the Live CD and installed it on a virtual machine and it's
working great. I'm trying to build a suite of GIS tools I can for the
various
tasks I have to do at work and it's great having so many products right
in front of me. It's highly quality work and I appreciate all the hard
work to pull it together.

What would be really helpful to me (and possibly other new-to-GIS folks
like myself) is a FAQ-type list of questions with app answers. For
example:


Do you want to edit shapefiles? Try xxx, yyy, zzz.
Do you want to style shapefiles? Try ...
Do you want to work exclusively with raster files?
Do you need to work simultaneously with raster and vector files?
Do you want to convert one file into one another format?
Do you want to convert raster to vector?
Vector to raster?
Vector to another vector?

etc.

If there were a couple dozen questions with short answers it would really
supplement the disc quite well.

For instance, I'm trying to figure out how to convert a raster (binary
GRID) file into a shapefile. I dink around in the various programs on the
CD, but I don't know if I just can't find the convert raster to vector
option in a particular app or if it isn't there at all. A short little
QA text file would be nice to help at least focus my initial search
a little bit better. At the least I (hopefully) would be pointed to the
best choices for my purpose.


Hope this makes sense!

Frank

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] AWSTATS experts?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

It is self service. Look at the footer of every post.
 http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss


On 9/29/2010 7:13 PM, moxamillion wrote:

how do I get my email address removed?  from this list

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Tyler Mitchell tmitch...@osgeo.org
mailto:tmitch...@osgeo.org wrote:

Slightly off topic, but regarding some OSGeo server.

I'm looking at a few problems we're having running awstats and
wondering if anyone with more experience than I am is lurking on
this list.  If you have a few minutes for me to describe the problem
and/or even get you into the system to help, please drop me a note
or message me on skype (aka: spatialguru).

We could use a comprehensive review of our awstats setup since I'm
sure it can be improved.  Likewise we have some past logs and
awstats db to ingest that I can't figure out how to do.

Thank you,
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Thoughts on how to use elevation in routing

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Yes, on the OSGeo Discuss list there was the interesting suggestion that 
one could compute the viewshed for points along a road segment to get an 
estimate of the potential view from that segment. I'm thinking about 
doing this in the future since I already have the DEM which would be 
required for the US. The BIG problem is how to do this from a great many 
points as it is compute cost heavy.


There are also problems with vegetation blocking the view, but just 
computing the potential view based on the DEM might be a good starting 
point. By comparing the difference between a DEM that looks at the 
ground and one that looks at the vegetation you can probably get a good 
idea of whether or not the view is hidden by the vegetation.


So many ideas and so little time and compute power sigh.

In the idea of costing cross traffic turns higher than with traffic 
turns, this would be a very cool feature to have in pgRouting. In the 
abstract we are adding a cost at a node based on a rule. If the rules 
are extensible, then a node might also represent a bus stop and a 
schedule such that given an arrival time at the stop we can cost then 
compute the wait time for each successive departure when doing 
multi-modal routing.


-Steve

On 9/15/2010 10:09 AM, Anton Patrushev wrote:

Correct, but not with only right (left) turns, but with much higher
costs for left (right) turns.
Slightly off the topic - at the FOSS4G conference poster session I saw
very interesting application for tourism with costs assigned according
to how beautiful or interesting road segments are.

Anton.

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 7:22 AM, Geoff Haygeoffrey@otago.ac.nz  wrote:

Hi All
I seem to remember reading somewhere that UPS delivery routes are
constructed with only right turns (or left depending on the country) so as
to make use of 'free' turns to avoid waiting at traffic lights.
Geoff

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Thoughts on how to use elevation in routing

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Yes, this is another good factor to look at. Curvature can be computed 
as the 2nd derivative or the rate of change in angle along the road. 
This is a little harder to compute with segments as you need to join 
adjacent segments to compute this or you get disconnects where they 
join. And you have to figure out what are through streets at 
intersections of more then two segments. But still a good measure.


Also curvyness can often com into play when following rivers and 
streams even when there is not significant grade.


-Steve

On 9/14/2010 12:52 PM, Richard Greenwood wrote:

I think cruvyness might also be a useful resistance factor, and it
is often associated with grade, as in steep mountain roads with lots
of switchbacks. After attending FOSS4G last week my wife and I have
been driving and biking in the Pyrenees and experiencing the effects
of both cruvyness and grade on our travel times.

Rich

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Stephen Woodbridge
wood...@swoodbridge.com  wrote:

On 9/14/2010 11:43 AM, Bill Thoen wrote:


  Steve,

Adding viewsheds to the package would certainly up the computing costs;
I was wondering if you had a limit to what sort of processing power
you've got there. ;-)


It is not unlimited, so part of the problem that is interesting to me is how
to find and compute economical way to do it.


I also think what you're proposing might be interesting, but you have to
be careful about what conclusions you can draw from it. At what point
does the cost due to gradient variations become insignificant to the
overall cost of a route for a particular type of vehicle? For a trucker
on an interstate highway it doesn't signify because the statistical
noise of factors such high speeds and short driving time balanced
against the higher price of fuel, services and road freight taxes
completely overwhelms the cost factor contributed by the change in
gradients. So in those cases you'd be computing numbers but not saying
anything.


Agreed, doing anything for the trucking industry that would be useful
probably requires a lot more understanding of the industry and regulations
required for that. Luckily it is not my main focus :)


A different scenario, where gradient /is/ a significant factor, would be
a three-day 100 mile bike ride event through the mountains (like the
'Ride the Rockies' event they hold around here every year.) The power
that bicyclists can produce is so low that speeds and endurance are
strongly affected by grades. But a bicyclist doesn't typically operate
on the scale of the nation so applying the calculations to the entire
TIGER file is overkill. Also, the bicyclist operates on such a large
scale that the source data you're using to calculate gradient (30m DEM)
may be too coarse to be reliable on the bicyclist's scale.


Right, these points are all valid and have crossed my mind at one point or
another. Applying this to the Tiger data set is not that big of a deal. I
already have the Tiger data in XYZ so computing grades is not that
difficult. Another reason for applying it to the whole data set is to build
a web portal with US coverage. Granted any single route will not have
continental scope, but individual routes might be anywhere on the continent.


I'm not saying it isn't worth doing, I'm just saying you'll need to
qualify the precision of your results before you can say much about
applying this to any real-world problems.


I'll post a link back if I get anything working. Meanwhile, thanks for the
ideas and thoughts.

-Steve


- Bill Thoen


On 9/13/2010 5:28 PM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:


Bill,

Thanks for the ideas. I might try to do something with the viewshed
idea in the future. It would need a LOT of computing to process all
the road segments in a National dataset like Tiger.

But for now I would like to figure out the routing costs.

One idea I had was to compute the grade for a segment and then compute
cost as:

cost = (time or distance) * scalefactor * max(abs(grade), 1.0)

This would have the effect of causing segments with a lot of grade to
have a higher cost of traversal.

Or similarly, if you want to pick roads with a lot of elevation
changes then use cost factor like:

cost = (time or distance) * scalefactor /
abs(sum_elevation_changes_over_the_segment)

This would have the effect of decreasing the traversal cost for
segments that have a lot of elevation changes.

These are pretty crude estimates and probably would need some fine
tuning to get reasonable results.

Thanks,
-Steve W

On 9/13/2010 4:24 PM, Bill Thoen wrote:


Stephen Woodbridge wrote:


Hi all,

(This is cross posting from the pgrouting list, sorry for the dups.)

I have preprocessed some shapefile data and added elevation
information in the Z value of the coordinates. I'm wondering how to
best utilize that in routes and would like any thoughts or ideas you
might be willing to share.

The obvious answer is to wrap the elevation data into the cost values
as this is simple and straight forward

[OSGeo-Discuss] Thoughts on how to use elevation in routing

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

(This is cross posting from the pgrouting list, sorry for the dups.)

I have preprocessed some shapefile data and added elevation information 
in the Z value of the coordinates. I'm wondering how to best utilize 
that in routes and would like any thoughts or ideas you might be willing 
to share.


The obvious answer is to wrap the elevation data into the cost values as 
this is simple and straight forward and does not require code changes. 
This brings me to what have other people done or thought about doing in 
this regard?


Here are some random thoughts I have had on this in no particular order:

o for bicycles, we probably only care about UP grade and length. This 
would imply that segments need to be in a directed graph with different 
costs going from A-B vs. B-A based on the upgrade


o for trucks, maybe an un-directed graph is ok, because they need to use 
low gear both up and down depending on the grade and length


o for motorcycles, hilly terrain tends to mean more twisty roads which 
are more fun to ride so lower costs for roads with lots of elevation 
changes.


grade = (rise / run) * 100

where run should be the 2D length of the segment.

Is there a standard way of factoring grade into the route calculations?

Doing some google searches, most all papers I saw related to fuel and 
emissions and did not seem to be very applicable to the above.


Thanks,
  -Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Thoughts on how to use elevation in routing

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Bill,

Thanks for the ideas. I might try to do something with the viewshed idea 
in the future. It would need a LOT of computing to process all the road 
segments in a National dataset like Tiger.


But for now I would like to figure out the routing costs.

One idea I had was to compute the grade for a segment and then compute 
cost as:


cost = (time or distance) * scalefactor * max(abs(grade), 1.0)

This would have the effect of causing segments with a lot of grade to 
have a higher cost of traversal.


Or similarly, if you want to pick roads with a lot of elevation changes 
then use cost factor like:


cost = (time or distance) * scalefactor /
   abs(sum_elevation_changes_over_the_segment)

This would have the effect of decreasing the traversal cost for segments 
that have a lot of elevation changes.


These are pretty crude estimates and probably would need some fine 
tuning to get reasonable results.


Thanks,
  -Steve W

On 9/13/2010 4:24 PM, Bill Thoen wrote:

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Hi all,

(This is cross posting from the pgrouting list, sorry for the dups.)

I have preprocessed some shapefile data and added elevation
information in the Z value of the coordinates. I'm wondering how to
best utilize that in routes and would like any thoughts or ideas you
might be willing to share.

The obvious answer is to wrap the elevation data into the cost values
as this is simple and straight forward and does not require code
changes. This brings me to what have other people done or thought
about doing in this regard?

Since you seem to enjoy large database problems, have you considered
loading the DEM data together with the roads and sample the viewshed
every few km? You could then create an objective cost factor for
scenic, proportional to the amount of land visible, with some
adjusting factor that distinguishes morphology, land cover, or other
weighted factors from each sample point. Creating a scale of scenic
and picturesque as it goes form ho-hum flatland to precipitous,
brake-burning, wheel-gripping adventurous might be fun all by itself.

If you're looking for 3D ideas, there's a GIS consulting company across
the hall from me that specializes in 3D information, visualization and
analysis, and I know they are working on web services to deliver the
sort of data that an application like yours would consume. Their website
is full of 3D imagery, articles and examples that you might want to
check out for ideas or inspiration There's a particularly good
demonstration of using fog instead of shadow to create a visual
representation of ridge lines, if your 're using those to determine a
topographic index (see http://ctmap.com/serendipity/index.php).

*Bill Thoen*
GISnet - www.gisnet.com http://www.gisnet.com/
1401 Walnut St., Suite C
Boulder, CO 80302
303-786-9961 tel
303-443-4856 fax
bth...@gisnet.com

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] is TileCache alive ?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

There is also a patch to mapserver that provides on the fly tile 
generations and serving tiles from a cache. This is slated to be 
integrated with mapserver 6.0.


http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/3513

-Steve W

On 9/1/2010 9:06 AM, John Callahan wrote:

I was also just looking into tile caching options and had exactly the
same question.  It looks like the latest version (2.10) was released
back in Jan 2009, and the readme is dated Dec 2007.  It would also need
to update the use of mod_python, which I read development had stopped a
while ago.

I know of GeoWebCache, which can also work directly with WMS.  And
packages like Mapnik and GDAL2Tiles/MapTiler can preprocess your data
into tiles. Great for overlays.  Are there other tiling mechanisms to
consider?

- John




On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:51 AM, Bart van den Eijnden bart...@osgis.nl
mailto:bart...@osgis.nl wrote:

Sure, it has moved to OsGeo infrastructure.

*http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/tilecache/*
*
*
*Best regards,*
*Bart*
*
*
--
Looking for flexible support on OpenLayers or GeoExt? Please check
out http://www.osgis.nl/support.html

Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS
bart...@osgis.nl mailto:bart...@osgis.nl

On Sep 1, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Sebastian E. Ovide wrote:


Hi Guys,

from http://openlayers.org/pipermail/tilecache/ it is possible to
see mails up to April.

Is TileCache project alive ?

thanks

--
Sebastian E. Ovide




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[OSGeo-Discuss] Mapping a more accurate geoid

[Stephen Woodbridge]

This might interest some of us:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8767763.stm

-Steve W
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Need help backporting postgis-1.5.1 to debian lenny using pbuilder

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

If anyone has any experience pbuilder on debian and/or backporting 
postgis to lenny, I could really use some help. I'm using the pkg-grass 
package definitions. Please contact me off list. If I can get this to 
work, I'd be happy to document the process and post it somewhere.


TIA,
  -Steve
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [SoC] Google Summer of Code 2010 begins

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Thank you! Wolf and the rest of the admin team.
Now the work for us begins ;)

-Steve

Wolf Bergenheim wrote:

Hello,

first of all we at OSGeo would like to to thank all students who
applied this year! THANK YOU :D

Then congratulations are in order for the 10 students selected to
participate in the program. Well done and welcome to the community!
We'd wanted to take more students but unfortunately that isn't
possible. For those of you who didn't get a selected we'd like to
invite you to participate in the summer anyway. If you let us know
that you intend to work on your project we're more than pleased to
help you out! Even if you won't get the Google stipend you will get
lots of experience and some very good contacts for the future. I, and
(I'm sure other mentors as well) would be happy to write letters of
recommendation to any student who complete their work, with or without
a Google sponsored contract.
If you do it without a slot you will have more freedom, but a plan is
still a very good idea since it will help you finish.

If you are curious to see what projects OSGeo is doing this year, go
over to our home page in Melange[1] and have a look. The project plans
will be detailed and wiki pages will be set up for the students within
the near future, but the accepted project abstracts should be publicly
visible.

Thank you again, all students who applied and thank you to mentors for
evaluating over 50 good proposals and selecting the top 10 slots.

I will be sending further instructions to students and mentors later
this week, for now, relax, and get to know your Student/Mentor(s).

The summer is on!
Wolf Bergenheim,
OSGeo GSoC 2010 Administrator

[1] http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/org/home/google/gsoc2010/osgeo
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Mailing list problems - can somebody fix this? Please

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Mail Delivery System wrote:

This is the Postfix program at host lists.osgeo.org.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The Postfix program

r...@lists.osgeo.org (expanded from postmas...@lists.osgeo.org): cannot
append message to destination file /var/mail/root: cannot open file:
Permission denied




Reporting-MTA: dns; lists.osgeo.org
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 178DEE00E1F
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; wood...@swoodbridge.com
Arrival-Date: Mon,  5 Apr 2010 14:42:23 -0400 (EDT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; r...@lists.osgeo.org
Original-Recipient: rfc822; postmas...@lists.osgeo.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; cannot append message to destination file
/var/mail/root: cannot open file: Permission denied




Subject:
[Fwd: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender]
From:
Stephen Woodbridge wood...@swoodbridge.com
Date:
Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:40:26 -0400
To:
postmas...@lists.osgeo.org

To:
postmas...@lists.osgeo.org


Can someone looking into this issue. Everytime a post to the list, the 
post goes through ok, but I also get a bounce back like this.


Thanks,
  -Steve W

 Original Message 
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
Date: Mon,  5 Apr 2010 14:39:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: mailer-dae...@lists.osgeo.org (Mail Delivery System)
To: wood...@swoodbridge.com

This is the Postfix program at host lists.osgeo.org.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The Postfix program

mapserver-us...@lists.osgeo.org: mail forwarding loop for
mapserver-us...@lists.osgeo.org




Subject:
Re: [mapserver-users] Re: Adjacent letter problem [Bayesian] [Bayesian]
From:
Stephen Woodbridge wood...@swoodbridge.com
Date:
Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:36:17 -0400
To:
Ibrahim Saricicek ibrahimsarici...@gmail.com

To:
Ibrahim Saricicek ibrahimsarici...@gmail.com
CC:
mapserver-us...@lists.osgeo.org



Ibrahim Saricicek wrote:


Hi;

Mapserver 5.4.0 (ms4w)
I can't change the label size, this is optimum, bigger labels cover so 
many

ares, smaller can't be read..
I tried; arial, calibri, helvetica, verdana.. all the same??

and with,

LABEL
 TYPE truetype
 FONT 'arial'
 SIZE 8
 COLOR 0 0 0
END

The result is the same..
http://n2.nabble.com/file/n4853853/adjasent.jpg 



Try adding:

  ANTIALIAS TRUE

to your LABEL block.



-Steve W

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Looking for PHP, OpenLayers GPS tracking software

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Arnie, Brent,

Thank you for the suggestions. I'll check out openises when I have a 
chance. I have coded bits and pieces of this in various apps at one time 
or another, but it just seems like there should be something like this 
available.


I just got sidetracked for a few days, but I'll get back to looking into 
this some more.


Thanks again,
  -Steve

Arnie Shore wrote:
Steve, all:  I have an open source php/mysql CAD application 
(http://openises.sourceforge.net/tickets01.html) that's currently GMaps 
based, and I plan eventually to move that to OSM/OL. 

I expect that the tile serving cd be provided by a PHP script of rather 
limited complexity.


Our application does some gps tracking, with sources APRS, Google's 
Latitude, Instamapper, Locatea, etc.  You may have other sources in mind.


While you're welcome to anything we have, I'll certainly be interested 
in your progress.


Arnie Shore
Annapolis, MD


  Hi all,
 
  I'm looking for something like OpenGTS but written in PHP.
  The needs are pretty flexible. I would like the server side code
to be
  in PHP and the mapping interface to be OpenLayers based.
 
  Does anyone know if there is an OpenSource project doing
something like
  this?
 
  Thanks,
 -Steve





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[OSGeo-Discuss] Looking for PHP, OpenLayers GPS tracking software

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

I'm looking for something like OpenGTS but written in PHP.
The needs are pretty flexible. I would like the server side code to be 
in PHP and the mapping interface to be OpenLayers based.


Does anyone know if there is an OpenSource project doing something like 
this?


Thanks,
  -Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Quick hello and request for assistance finding Open Source

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Simon,

You might want to look at PostGIS. It is a GIS extension to the 
posgresql database. There are windows installers for it. There is a 
shapefile loaded and dumper, so you can easily load a shapefiles into 
tables then do SQL queries with geospatial function. The postgis support 
list has a bunch of very sharp people that can help you get started 
doing the queries that you need to generate you results.


-Steve W

Simon Cropper (Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd) wrote:

Hi Everyone,

My name is Simon and I am an environmental consultant. I use a variety 
of open source GIS systems and tools almost every day to analyse flora, 
fauna and vegetation data. I am interested in OSGeo both from the 
standpoint (or my underlying belief) that software and data should be 
free (you know how the mantra goes) and my desire to contribute to a 
broader community effort to develop appropriate software for users. I 
have been actively using OpenJUMP, Kosmo, OpenEV, EveryDWG and Sextante. 
I have tinkered with Ilwis, GRASS, Quantum (various versions) and a few 
others I have lost track of. I am currently using GVSIG+Sextante, which 
I find very useful and easy to use. I am an old user of ArcView 
3.1+(numerous scripts/extensions).


I have a common GIS problem but can not find any OSGeo project that has 
provided a set of tools to combat it. I need to establish the 
distance+angle between various geometries (points, lines, polygons) in 
same layer and in different layers. A specific problem I currently have 
is finding the minimum distance and angle between 200 odd polygons in 
the same layer. Each polygon has a unique id and I want to get a table 
with UID_A, UID_B, MINIMUM_DISTANCE, ANGLE. I know that ArcGIS and 
ArcView have this functionality, and script exist for old versions of 
ArcView, but I am looking for an Open Source alternative.


Ideally such a tool would create the following data for each geometry 
type...


POINTS -- UID_A, UID_B, DISTANCE, ANGLE
LINES -- UID_A, UID_B, DISTANCE_AT_CLOSEST _POINT
POLYGON --  UID_A, UID_B, MIN_DISTANCE, MAX_DISTANCE, 
HAUSDORFF_DISTANCE, CENTROID_DISTANCE, ANGLE_BETWEEN_CENTROIDS


What I have found already...

* I have noted that Sextante can create a matrix of distances
  between points within the same layer. With rows and column
  representing the complete set of points being compared.
* I have also found QGIS has a fTools Plugin that allows you to
  Measure distances between two point layers, and output results as
  a) Square distance matrix, b) Linear distance matrix, or c)
  Summary of distances. QGIS 2009.
* I suspect that GRASS would provide this functionality but can't
  get that package to work on my system (even WinGRASS), so if you
  point me here please also point me to a tutorial on getting the
  thing to work (this system is not intuitive; My problem has been
  in establishing a repository and getting data into it for viewing,
  let alone analysis; it failed the age old test that if you can't
  even get the thing running in half an hour, the learning curve is
  going to be way too high to use in in normal business activities;
  I have tried - yes following their instructions - several times,
  and spent several days reading manuals, wiki's,etc to no avail).

BUT I can't find any tool that allows me to calculate the minimum 
distance between polygons and indicate the direction of the polygon.


Anyone out there know of such a tool?

Note: I am using Windows XP Pro SP3 and store all my GIS data as shapefiles.
--

Cheers Simon

Simon Cropper
Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
PO Box 160, Sunshine, Victoria 3020.
P: 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437.
mailto: scrop...@botanicusaustralia.com.au 
mailto:scrop...@botanicusaustralia.com.au

web: www.botanicusaustralia.com.au http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au




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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] distributing read-only vector files?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

maning sambale wrote:

Before anything else, let me introduce our dilemma.  We are a
non-profit geo-research institution.  In many cases we produce
geospatial datasets no other local institution can create in my
country at the moment.  What we create are sometimes benchmark info
useful to various research and policy initiatives.  At the moment we
have two broad users the public (we provide free download of pdf maps)
and special interest group (requesting for GIS data).  We always want
our datasets to be used by other geoshop.

However, we have several concerns regarding the release of GIS data:
1.  Securing data integrity - once released we cannot guarantee that
the data will be distributed from other sources with


I think the best you can do here while trying to be relatively open is 
to publish your data and provide md5 sums of the data or the tar balls. 
If anyone is concerned about the source of the data or the correctness 
of the data then they can easily verify it from your distribution web site.



alterations/changes.  Some of this data may contain critical info that
if used (coming from altered data), our institution might be blamed.


There is nothing stopping someone from making up false data without 
using your data and publishing it as your be your data. Again making it 
clear the the data is available only from your site and providing an 
easy way to verify its correctness makes it easy to to people to 
validate against it.



2.  Ensuring corrections will be reported back to us for data enhancement.


The best you can do here is have users sign a contract and audit them if 
needed. This is not a technology issue.



3. Ensuring non-commercial use of the data


This has to be done via contract and legal obligations of the users. 
This is not a technology issue.



I'm sure these concerns are not unique to us but also common to other
institutions.  I am hoping we can discuss options on how we can
resolve the above concerns in areas both technical and institutional
policy.

Any ideas?


If you are trying to be open, then be open! Look at OpenStreetMap and 
how they do it. They have a page of license violations also.


If you want to be closed and controlling, then write an application the 
manages all these issues and provides whatever GIS tools your potential 
clients need and have it run off of encrypted data, and fear the day 
when someone hacks you code and frees your data.


Another alternative might be to build an application framework like 
google maps where you keep all your secret data on the server and only 
allow your users to interact with the server.


My $0.02,
  -Steve W
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Google Disruptive business models on Geo Data

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

This is a great article that has a lot of relevance to the 
OpenSource/OpenData world. I thought it was a good read.


http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/


Sorry for the cross-posting.

-Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open Location Services

[Stephen Woodbridge]

http://www.openrouteservice.org/

This is the only one that I know about. But last time I looked I did not 
see a link to download source code.


-Steve

Sampson, David wrote:


I am looking for an open source project that has implemented OpenLS 
specification from OGC.
 
I know their are some groups working on this

* PAGC (on their road map)
* OpenRouter (any code yet?)
* OpenGeocoder (any code yet?)
 
I am looking to see if anyone has this OUT OF THE BOX and ready to 
download and install.
 
If there are any projects that are close I wouldn't mind hearing when 
the proposed release date is or what is required to make OpenLS happen 
with an open source solution.
 
My understanding is that OSGEO is working towards refrence 
implementations of OGC specs 
(http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/944) perhaps 
OpenLS has a reference implementation?
 
Cheers





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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Remote routing solutions

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Mateusz Loskot wrote:

Folks,

May I kindly ask for a bit of brainstorming about
available and programmatically callable,
optionally usable,
optionally effective,
optionally robust
solutions of remote routing services?

The use case is very simple:
1) client is a non-Web thin client
2) client has access to the Internet
3) client knows two locations start and destination
4) client wants to know how to travel from start to destination

What are available options to achieve that? Where if availability means:
* accessible for public
* free of charge
* does not require to sign anything,

Custom solutions built on OGC-enabled stack (e.g. PyWPS, etc.) is also
an option to discuss.

Any input greatly appreciated.

Best regards,


Mateusz,

Is the client looking for a solution that runs somewhere on the net that 
they can make requests to, or are they looking to setup a server with 
data and a routing engine?


So I'll plug my infant and immature routing engine project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengraphrouter/

Also pgRouting is an option.

The big issues in most cases will be data. Some people are doing routing 
with OpenStreetMap and pgRouting. If they want accurate (ie: navigable 
routes then they will probably need something based on Navteq or 
TeleAtlas) or if they are look at a small county or state wide area then 
they might be able to get data from the local governments like 
http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm


Because good data is expensive and licensed, in most cases by 
transactions, it is not likely that you will find services equivalent to 
Google that are free.


-Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Remote routing solutions

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Mateusz Loskot wrote:

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Mateusz Loskot wrote:

Folks,

May I kindly ask for a bit of brainstorming about
available and programmatically callable,
optionally usable,
optionally effective,
optionally robust
solutions of remote routing services?

The use case is very simple:
1) client is a non-Web thin client
2) client has access to the Internet
3) client knows two locations start and destination
4) client wants to know how to travel from start to destination

What are available options to achieve that? Where if availability means:
* accessible for public
* free of charge
* does not require to sign anything,

Custom solutions built on OGC-enabled stack (e.g. PyWPS, etc.) is also
an option to discuss.

Any input greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Mateusz,

Is the client looking for a solution that runs somewhere on the net that
they can make requests to, or are they looking to setup a server with
data and a routing engine?



I intentionally didn't write anything about that as an indicator that it
does not matter. I mean, both options arepossible.
I can install (almost) anything or I can use something that's ready now.
Certainly, the latter would be easier.

By the way, I use word client as software client but not as a person
or company who asked me to deliver solution.
Actually, I'm thinking about implementing and delivering something on my
own, as an Open Source Software. However, that's another story.


So I'll plug my infant and immature routing engine project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengraphrouter/


Interesting. I will take a look. Of course I will, I've seen the Boost
stuff over there in SVN, hehe ;-)


Also pgRouting is an option.


I know about it but...data, bloody data!


The big issues in most cases will be data.


Yes.


Some people are doing routing with OpenStreetMap and pgRouting.


What are the results of OSM evaluation for routing purposes?


If they want accurate (ie: navigable
routes then they will probably need something based on Navteq or
TeleAtlas) or if they are look at a small county or state wide area then
they might be able to get data from the local governments like
http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm


At this particular moment, I don't care about data.
It probably silly as any software without data is useless, but first I'm
interested in setting up some remote service (software) infrastructure
(a demo, a testbed) that will allow a *thin* client to exploit and
benefit of routing.
This could be tested using any data that are available.
If proved working, finding proper data would be next step.


Because good data is expensive and licensed, in most cases by
transactions, it is not likely that you will find services equivalent to
Google that are free.


I'm am an incurable dreamer but that incurable to aim to beat Google :-)

Best regards,


Mateusz,

Seems like you have a bunch of good options in front of you. If you are 
so inclined to code something new, I would be interested in discussing 
your ideas and combining resources with OpenGraphRouter. Our GSoC 
student is interested in continuing work on the project, but he nuked 
his laptop and is waiting for a replacement. He is also in Bangladesh so 
TZs can be a challenge for us at times, but we have been making it work 
so far.


-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] MapServer dynamic thematic map

[Stephen Woodbridge]

jxRui,

You should ask this question on the Mapserver Users List

mapserver-users mailing list
mapserver-us...@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users

You are more likely to get a response to this Mapserver specific 
question on that list.


I have added it to the reply.

-Steve W

芮建勋 wrote:

Folks,
I know that MapServer can draw dynamic thematic map(choropleth map) via
cgi.  I'd like to develope MapServer app via PHP MapScript to realize
the dynamic thematic map. But i find that the PHP MapScript interface
 cannot do this.
For instance, i have only one polygon layer about U.S states,and this
layer has 50 fields in the dbf or in MySQL,the most important thing is
 that these attributes values varying everyday. When the user select one
of the fields from the droplist component of the MapServer web app in 
Firefox or ie

 explorer,then the dynamic thematic map wil be drawn automaticly with the
 selected fields.
What can i do this via PHP MapScript ? I need your help. Thank a lot to
 you first!
  Best regards
  jxRui




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[OSGeo-Discuss] How about an OSGeo Credit Card?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4577tag=nl.e539
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] fleet management

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Dimitris Kotzinos wrote:

Dear all,

I have a couple of quick questions looking for equally quick :) answers.
1/ does anyone know of an open source solution for fleet management?
2/ if not, is there an interest of starting/setting up a group to work 
on this?



I am also interested in such a program.

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] fleet management

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Arnie Shore wrote:
Steve/All, my particular interest is in getting data from whatever 
client devices are available back to the server, for situation display.  
So right now, I dunno what category of generic software wd help me do 
that - but I'm sure guilty of not having thought much about that problem.


Right now, our CAD is gathering position data via connection to a remote 
repository, like APRS, Instamapper, and - coming - Latitude and 
Locatea.  Which works, but that's a long way around.


So I'm interested in hearing re what particular problems you folks want 
to solve, within the realm of AVL.  Possibly 'just' an Open Source 
version of what those folks do, implemented as a daemon or web service?


AS

PS: I'm with you in a lack of interest in a Java-based solution.


Arnie,

I think that we should look at the whole value chain from end to end and 
break it into some logical chunks and adopt or define some well defined 
API/interface/protocols/whatever between them. This would allow these 
modules to develop somewhat independently and interact when the 
interfaces needed to be updated to handle new technology or devices or 
backends.


It seems like a lot of the basic pieces might already exist and need to 
be glued together, and some of the pieces need to be defined and built out.


It would probably help if someone started with an outline of the major 
components and what data needs to flow between them. With that as a 
straw dog, we can build on that or change it, and get a better 
definition and see where we have agreement and/or disagreement. Then 
build on those ideas.


-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Wiki Upkeep - Orphaned Pages

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Markus Neteler wrote:

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Alex Mandel
tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote:

So looking around there a few things that could use some work on the
wiki and are easy enough for any community member to help with.

1. We have 327 Orphaned Pages, these are pages that exist but that no
other page links to. Which means no one is likely to ever find them or
their useful content.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=Special:LonelyPageslimit=500offset=0


Alex, not sure how this works, e.g.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Cascadoss_Symposium_2008
is indexed like that but that's a legal page about a past
event (where we participated).
I consider it a bug if a valid category isn't sufficient to get
a page not be marked as orphaned. Making artificial links
elsewhere doesn't make sense to me - any opinion how to
deal with this phenomenon?


Markus,

I think the point is that there is no way to navigate to that page. It's 
fine if an external site links to it because it is a valid page. I think 
the point is that maybe we should have a page like OSGeo Events off 
the front page that then links to say a past events page and collects 
all the pages about past events.


This has the benefit that:

1) if I don't know the URL, but I'm searching for events I might find it
2) search engines that start at the front page will index it
etc

-Steve W
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Anyone interested in geocoding and routing?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Toru Mori,

Your experience with geocoders seems to be very broad and your input on
constructing a new tool will be very valuable. I have never and probably
will never work with Asian address systems because I can not read the
languages. I have written and maintained 3-4 other geocoders mostly
oriented toward US, Canada, Europe. I also have a lot of experience
working with the Oracle Spatial geocoder which handled all of US,
Canada, and England and most of Western Europe very well using a single
engine.

By the way, the geocoders do not all have to fit into the same data
structures or tables (assuming SQL). I would also not assume that
addresses have to be in street ranges, in fact some places have all
houses identified by a point. TeleAtlas data has a combination of
address ranges, and exceptions to the ranges.

The framework should provide structure for the various efforts, and
maybe provide standard services that many of the plugins can use but it
should not get in the way. For example if you do not want your addresses
standardized then you would install the do_not_mess_with_my_data
standardizer.

Someone mentioned in another post (that I can't find at the moment),
that a lot of the work will be pre-processing the raw data to load it,
this is true. The pre-processing is to standardize the data before it is
loaded, so when you standardize an input request, you have a better
chance of matching it. But you obviously should use the same
standardizer in both cases, so data loading design can not be done
separately from the overall design of an individual engine and the
country standardization tools. Once an engine has been designed, it is
possible to write data loaders for various different datasets that can
be serviced by a given engine.

I look forward to your input, experience and lessons learned.

-Steve

(Orkney)Toru Mori wrote:
 Steve,
 
 I totally agree to your opinion. We can have a standard framework and we 
 may call it OSgeo international geocoding framework, not geocoder.
 
 Everybody would love concept of GDAL/OGR, however, geocoder will have 
 deferent story.
 
 In my experience of working for a U.S. based GIS company which has global 
 operations, an international geocoder was always requested by customers. 
 The company developed geocoders of U.S., Canada, England, Western part of 
 Europe and Australia. However, they are not really unified. Even they have 
 similar address systems, the U.S. engine couldn't handle other regions 
 instantly.
 
 Regarding Japan, Korea and China, they have unique address systems each, 
 so even normalization of inbound address data process did not work with 
 one algorithm. Geocoder always works with data. Address data and system 
 are made based on each local culture and history.
 
 I won't discourage that we try to have an open geocoder at all.
 Just want to avoid possible misunderstanding on this list that i18n 
 geocoder can be a snap.
 
 Mori
 
 Stephen Woodbridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote：
 Yes, you are correct, but this is not a reason for not trying. For
 example, US, Canada, and most (all?) of Europe could be represented by a
 single engine. It is likely, that large chunks of the rest of the world
 can be represented by a similar engine, and then there will be a bunch
 of exceptions, like those you reference in Asia.

 It seems to me that if you scan the in coming request you should be able
 to guess the country or identify it as part of the request and load the
 engine/data to support it, if it is supported, and go from there.

 Data is always a problem. That is one of the reasons that I think a SQL
 backing store is required. Each data set would need to be mapped and
 standardized to a standard schema that is supported by one of the
 geocoder engines. Data would need to be converted from its raw format
 and standardized into the standard schema.

 So beyond the API, we would have some representative geocoder engines
 and specific data loaders targeted at specific data sets, and data
 standardizers targeted at specific countries.

 If we take a modular approach of using plugins, then we can design an
 API, design the plugin API, design some of the data standards, and make
 reference implementations. This will allow the project to work with many
 people that have specific data/country needs that can build into the
 framework.

 I do not expect to have a one size fits all solution, I just think we
 can have a standard framework that any solution can fit into and from
 that we can have lots of collaborators working on it. I think of this
 like OpenStreetMap when it first started. I thought to myself that this
 is crazy it will never work, there are too many roads, etc. Today they
 have an impressive collection of spatial data. This is a huge task, but
 it can be tackled one step at a time.

 -Steve

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Anyone interested in geocoding and routing?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Yes, you are correct, but this is not a reason for not trying. For
example, US, Canada, and most (all?) of Europe could be represented by a
single engine. It is likely, that large chunks of the rest of the world
can be represented by a similar engine, and then there will be a bunch
of exceptions, like those you reference in Asia.

It seems to me that if you scan the in coming request you should be able
to guess the country or identify it as part of the request and load the
engine/data to support it, if it is supported, and go from there.

Data is always a problem. That is one of the reasons that I think a SQL
backing store is required. Each data set would need to be mapped and
standardized to a standard schema that is supported by one of the
geocoder engines. Data would need to be converted from its raw format
and standardized into the standard schema.

So beyond the API, we would have some representative geocoder engines
and specific data loaders targeted at specific data sets, and data
standardizers targeted at specific countries.

If we take a modular approach of using plugins, then we can design an
API, design the plugin API, design some of the data standards, and make
reference implementations. This will allow the project to work with many
people that have specific data/country needs that can build into the
framework.

I do not expect to have a one size fits all solution, I just think we
can have a standard framework that any solution can fit into and from
that we can have lots of collaborators working on it. I think of this
like OpenStreetMap when it first started. I thought to myself that this
is crazy it will never work, there are too many roads, etc. Today they
have an impressive collection of spatial data. This is a huge task, but
it can be tackled one step at a time.

-Steve

(Orkney)Toru Mori wrote:
 Apart from technical design, geocoder is useless without data :)
 
 Address systems are varied and messy, at least here in Japan and in other 
 Asia region. For example, Japan has more than 3 systems. Additionally it 
 is very tough to get good enough data. There is no separation in address 
 text. 
 
 We developed geocoder.ja already for our region specifically, but 
 unfortunately it won't work in even other countries in Asia. 
 http://www.postlbs.org/ja/geocoder
 
 
 A sigle universal, global geocoder may sound perfect. However, there is 
 very limited space in terms of standardization as follows.
 
 -
  API (can be standardized)
 -
  thin parser (might be standardized)
 -
  geocoding logic (cannot be standardized)
 -
  local dataset (varied and messy)
 -
 
 So what OSGeo should lead would be just APIs. If OSGeo wants to 
 standardize lower levels, then the project won't finish probably.
 
 
 p.s. Anybody want to talk about routing?
 
 Toru Mori
 
 
 Andrew Ross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote：
 Thank you everyone for the great response to this post.
  
 I'd like to poll everyone's thoughts regarding the appropriate next
 steps. It seems to me we have good support for this initiative. 
  
 It isn't as clear to me yet what the best way forward is. My instincts
 are leaning towards spending time to capture requirements, identify key
 use cases, and crucial standards. The thinking is that with this
 information captured, we're in a better position to review the
 implementations available to identify which candidates are best
 positioned to satisfy those needs.
  
 I would like to echo Andrew Turner's comments that we're focusing on
 API's that can be used offline rather than a web service. (though it's
 good to see great web service projects out there!)
  
 Input, thoughts, feedback are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance,
  
 Andrew


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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Anyone interested in geocoding and routing?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Andrew Ross wrote:


Thank you everyone for the great response to this post.
 
I'd like to poll everyone's thoughts regarding the appropriate next 
steps. It seems to me we have good support for this initiative.
 
It isn't as clear to me yet what the best way forward is. My instincts 
are leaning towards spending time to capture requirements, identify key 
use cases, and crucial standards. The thinking is that with this 
information captured, we're in a better position to review the 
implementations available to identify which candidates are best 
positioned to satisfy those needs.


yeah, this sounds about right, use cases or requirements are a good 
start. Here are some of mine:


Use any dataset with some minimal requirements? For example, Navteq, 
TeleAtlas, Tiger, Canadian NRN data, OpenStreetMap, other local statsets.


API that can easily be called from C or C++ applications code or an 
apache web service, or be SWIG'ed to various scripting languages.


The ability to pass a full address as a single field, or to be able to 
pass data already split into fields.


Should be capable of returning approximate results based on fuzzy searches.

Results should be scored and sorted with best first.

I would like to see the backing stores for the geocoder to be SQL based 
and configurable between, SQLite, Postgresql, others.


The ability to support multiple countries and languages. This has an 
implication for parsing and standardizing data. We should be able to add 
support for a new country by installing some additional datafiles or tables.


I would like to echo Andrew Turner's comments that we're focusing on 
API's that can be used offline rather than a web service. (though it's 
good to see great web service projects out there!)


Having a good API is critical because it is trivial to write various 
versions of applications as shells about the API. For example:


1) fetch command arguments, call api, print results -- commandline tool
2) fetch web request, call api, return results as xml -- CGI service
3) SWIG API, script interface for perl, python, .NET, etc
4) etc

-Steve W


Input, thoughts, feedback are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance,
 
Andrew


*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Andrew Ross

*Sent:* November 5, 2008 7:59 PM
*To:* OSGEO Discussion list
*Subject:* [OSGeo-Discuss] Anyone interested in geocoding and routing?

 
Hi Everyone,
 
A few of us have been talking and thought the timing might be right to 
try and start projects to work on Geocoding and Routing. We're still 
gathering information and checking to learn who's interested.
 
If you are interested, please check out the following wiki's and add 
your name in the section you are interested in.
 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OpenGeocoder
 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OpenRouter
 
There are experts out there that are far more knowledgeable about 
Geocoding and Routing than I am. To these good people: please feel 
empowered to make modifications, provide feedback in whatever way you 
feel most comfortable.
 
Thanks,
 
Andrew





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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The existence (and value of) clean geocoding tools?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

David Dearing wrote:
Hi.  I just recently stumbled across OSGeo and have poked around to try 
and get a feel for the different projects, but still have a lingering 
question.  Forgive me if this isn't the appropriate channel to be asking 
this.


It seems that there is a solid focus on mapping, image manipulation, and 
geometric processing at OSGeo.  And, in the more broad world including 
non-open source projects, there are a lot of tools available for the 
mass production of geotagged or geocoded documents.  However, the 
accuracy of these systems, while good, doesn't seem sufficient when 
accuracy is at a premium (from what I've seen they tend to focus on 
volume).


Are there any existing tools that can be used to tag/code documents, 
perhaps sacrificing the mass-produced aspect for better accuracy?  Have 
I just missed/overlooked some existing tool(s) that meet this 
description?  Or, am I in the minority in wanting to produce fewer 
clean geocoded/tagged documents rather than many pretty good documents?


Have you looked at http://ofb.net/~egnor/google.html
http://www.pagcgeo.org/


Geocoding is NOT exact, in fact it deals with a very messy area of 
natural language parsing. While it is constrained more than free text, 
it still has to deal with all the issues of typos, abbreviations, 
punctuations, etc and then it has to match the user into to some vendor 
data.


For example: matching AL 44, Alabama 44, AL-44, Alabama Highway 44, 
Highway 44, State Highway 44, Rt 44, and various other abbreviations for 
Highway, simple typo errors, adding N, N., North, S, S., South, etc 
designations to the Highway, adding Alt., Bus., Byp., etc and on it 
goes. You also need to deal with accented characters, that are sometimes 
entered without accents.


In a geocoder, you typically have a standardizer that sort our all that 
craziness. Then when you load the geocoder, you standardize the vendor 
data and store it in a standard form. When you get a geocode request you 
standardize the incoming request and then try to match the standard form 
with the vendor data which is also in standard form. As an alternative 
to a standardizer some geocoders use statistical record match techniques.


You can also you techniques like metaphone/soundex codes to do fuzzy 
searching and then use levensthein distance to score the possible 
matched results for how close they are to the request.


You need to be prepared to handle multiple results to a query, for 
example you search for Oak St. but only find North Oak Street and South 
Oak Street.


And all this can only happen after you have tagged some text in a 
document if you are doing tagging. You mention accuracy is important, 
well how do you determine what is right, remember the Oak St example 
above.


Anyway this is a good place to discuss this topic.

-Stephen Woodbridge
 http://imaptools.com/
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubator Sponsor idea.

[Stephen Woodbridge]

An other thought on this might be a some kind of OSGeo contrib project 
that is more focused on collecting projects likes Bob's into a common 
repository with the hope that making these public might allow some of 
them to spin-off into full blown OSGeo projects if there is enough 
interest and community need for it.


This would not give the code OSGeo stamp of approval, but would just be 
a holding place for potentially interesting code related to other OSGeo 
projects that people might want to be able access and helps to prevent 
potential gems from getting lost.


My guess is that it would still need some kind of PSC to decide what is 
the gate to let things in and to make sure that the basic minimal stuff 
required for entrance is done and to encourge others to pick and run 
with ideas and spin-offs of the code being held. Something like this 
would need to minimally have any code contributed assign its copyright 
to OSGeo and state that it was infringement free or something like that.


Something to think about.

-Steve W

Bob Basques wrote:


Jody,
 
I was thinking about a bit more separation in functionality than you 
describe, but it seems like the same process could work.
 
I guess I'm trying to figure out a way to let smaller projects in the 
door, and let the mainstay project leaders decide if the smaller 
projects have enough merit to nurture further or not.
 
I have  a few different things I've put together that use MapServer as a 
service, but they are all seemingly small project.  As an example, I 
have a Raster distribution service based on MapServer that we use to 
populate our engineering AutoCAD sessions, it's really just some 
specialized scripting in the AutoCAD instance, but I'm sure there are 
folks out there that would re-use if I put it out as a project.  I would 
just barely have the time to put together a basic how-to for something 
like this and publish it, but it wouldn't get much in the way of support 
focus because of my own time constraints.  I have something similar for 
Google ion the Works, as well as Sketchup sessions.  These smaller 
projects have all had great success here internally, and are all built 
as standalone services so they can be mixed and matched as the business 
needs require.
 
Some might argue that they are all one thing, while other might want 
them to remain separated.  Anyway, just some more thoughts on the subject.
 
bobb
 



  Jody Garnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Bob; you will find that a few of the open source projects nurture new
talent this way.

The GeoTools library has the facilities in place to allow new developers
to come online and start an unsupported module with the support of the
community. Each module in GeoTools is an entire project (often making
use of the same interfaces and so forth).  When a module meets the QA
requirements it can be included in the GeoTools download for the general
public.

Is this what you had in mind?

I understand that some something similar to Jakarta is often requested
from the OSGeo foundation. Thus far the incubation committee has been
really focused on getting existing projects through our incubation
process (and defining what the expectations are for such projects).

Jody

Bob Basques wrote:
  All,
  I have a question about a possible way to get some smaller projects
  into the system without the requirements of going full bore (as I
  perceive it now)  I'm not really targeting any project per se at this
  point, but . . .
  
  What about have a Super project that can act as a sponsor for a

  smaller project.  When I say smaller, I mean where there might only be
  one, two or three developers.  The end result being that the Super
  project basically vouches for the smaller project in some fashion for
  it to get some sort of OSGEO stamp applied to it.   This could
  possibly be a criteria where some of the established vetting is
  handled via a voucher system, where other Super projects can add
  their credentials to the mix over time.
  
  Just a thought, still a little muddled too, but it seems like there

  might be something workable in the concept.  Any other thoughts?
  
  bobb
  
  
  

 
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubator Sponsor idea.

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Right, I don't disagree with this. I am just saying that there are a lot 
of good ideas and one man projects that will never have a large 
community to support them because of marketing, 
communications,visibility issues, not technical reasons, but that 
doesn't mean we should throw the code away. There are lots of open 
source projects that have a contrib directory as a place to collect 
unsupported contribution that other people might find useful. If enough 
people get exposed to them then a few might evolve into a full blow 
project and community. But if they never have an opportunity to have 
some visibility then the go sight unseen whether they gems or junk. I am 
not advocating making all these into projects, just that we consider 
some kind of project that does nothing more than collect OpenSource code 
that works with existing OSGeo project code or might be a valid OSGeo 
project if it were to grow and that that code has some minimal 
requirements to be included in contrib that the submitter must meet. The 
PSC for contrib would rule on appropriateness of a contribution and 
that it meets minimal requirements and might determine what those 
minimal requirements are.


Anyway seems like this would be valuable, but if no one else cares I'm 
fine with that, too.


-Steve

It is likely that most of this code would never go anywhere but
Cameron Shorter wrote:
For young projects that are not ready for incubation we have previously 
set up:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Labs

For the rest of this topic, I think we should go back to the principles 
of OSGeo and what makes it effective.


OSGeo (like Ubuntu) promotes the best of breed GeoFOSS software. It 
helps focus users, and developers behind the best products, rather than 
splitting energy thinly across many products.


And one of the key components for a successful project is to have a 
healthy community behind it so that it will continue when the key 
sponsor moves on. I don't think a meta project of unrelated small 
projects provides such a community because the developers from one small 
project won't necessarily be interested or skilled in the other projects.


The Openlayers/Geotools model of sponsoring smaller project does work 
because there (hopefully) should be the interest and skill sharing 
between the projects.


Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
An other thought on this might be a some kind of OSGeo contrib 
project that is more focused on collecting projects likes Bob's into a 
common repository with the hope that making these public might allow 
some of them to spin-off into full blown OSGeo projects if there is 
enough interest and community need for it.


This would not give the code OSGeo stamp of approval, but would just 
be a holding place for potentially interesting code related to other 
OSGeo projects that people might want to be able access and helps to 
prevent potential gems from getting lost.


My guess is that it would still need some kind of PSC to decide what 
is the gate to let things in and to make sure that the basic minimal 
stuff required for entrance is done and to encourge others to pick and 
run with ideas and spin-offs of the code being held. Something like 
this would need to minimally have any code contributed assign its 
copyright to OSGeo and state that it was infringement free or 
something like that.


Something to think about.

-Steve W

Bob Basques wrote:


Jody,
 
I was thinking about a bit more separation in functionality than you 
describe, but it seems like the same process could work.
 
I guess I'm trying to figure out a way to let smaller projects in the 
door, and let the mainstay project leaders decide if the smaller 
projects have enough merit to nurture further or not.
 
I have  a few different things I've put together that use MapServer 
as a service, but they are all seemingly small project.  As an 
example, I have a Raster distribution service based on MapServer that 
we use to populate our engineering AutoCAD sessions, it's really just 
some specialized scripting in the AutoCAD instance, but I'm sure 
there are folks out there that would re-use if I put it out as a 
project.  I would just barely have the time to put together a basic 
how-to for something like this and publish it, but it wouldn't get 
much in the way of support focus because of my own time constraints.  
I have something similar for Google ion the Works, as well as 
Sketchup sessions.  These smaller projects have all had great success 
here internally, and are all built as standalone services so they can 
be mixed and matched as the business needs require.
 
Some might argue that they are all one thing, while other might want 
them to remain separated.  Anyway, just some more thoughts on the 
subject.
 
bobb
 



  Jody Garnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Bob; you will find that a few of the open source projects nurture new
talent this way.

The GeoTools library has the facilities in place to allow new developers
to come online

[OSGeo-Discuss] us_tiger moving to geodata list

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

OK, is seems that we already have a list for these discussions and I 
have been asked to move the discussion over to geodata list. So, if you 
are not subscribed to the geodata list and want to talk about Tiger data 
please join us at:


http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/geodata

I will be closing the us_tiger list.

Sorry for the noise and confusion.

-Steve
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Requesting a new maillist

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Bob,

Thanks for the input. us_tiger is already gone. BTW. the geodata list is 
such low volume atm that I forgot I was already sub'd to it. I think we 
will try using the geodata list and if we really need a new list in the 
future, so be it.


I will start up some discussion there later today. Please join it as I 
would value your input and idea in this discussion.


-Steve

Bob Basques wrote:

All,

Not intending to stir the pot, but I think there is enough interest
in this Census data to justify a separate list.  It's got it's own
unique problems,  I would like it's name to reflect a more general
nature about centerlines though, and be called something like street
centerline list, but tiger naming seems to have a good amount of
awareness to it already.

BTW, I've already joined the new list in case someone takes it down
:c)  A pair of users does a list make, right?

I'm not interested in any of the other data at this point, and
discussing the Tiger stuff independently seems like the right course
of action from my perspective.  It's easy enough to
subscribe/unsubscribe to more/less lists, and it's usually a one time
operation, so I say more and specific lists.

I'm copying the new list too, where the discussion can continue . . .
.

My thirteen cents worth.

bobb




Christopher Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/21/08 7:56 AM


On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:58:44AM -0500, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

Hello,

I would like to create a new mailing list similar to the Can_rnf
list but called us_tiger for Discussions about US Census Tiger data
and how it can be used for various GIS projects.


I'm against a proliferation of mailing lists. I don't think this is 
neccesary: Why don't we just use the geodata list for this?


Regards,


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[OSGeo-Discuss] OT: Any one know of a Census list that discusses the Tiger data

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

Sorry for the cross post.

We have had some discussions in the past on Tiger data on the postGIS 
list and I have been looking at the new Tiger2007 data. I would be 
interested in discussing some observations I have noticed with others 
that are working with the same.


I don't want to clutter up this list with those posts and was wondering 
if anyone has come across and Census or Tiger related lists that might 
be appropriate for this kind of discussion.


Would this be an appropriate list to ask OSGeo to host?

Thanks,
  -Stephen Woodbridge
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Problem with links on http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo

[Stephen Woodbridge]

To whom it may concern,

I tried to contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] which is referenced from

http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/admin


But the address bounced with:



This is the Postfix program at host lists.osgeo.org.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The Postfix program

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (expanded from [EMAIL PROTECTED]): cannot append
message to destination file /var/mail/root: cannot open file: Permission
denied





This probably needs to get fixed.

-Steve
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Requesting a new maillist

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hello,

I would like to create a new mailing list similar to the Can_rnf list 
but called us_tiger for Discussions about US Census Tiger data and how 
it can be used for various GIS projects.


An alternative would be to call it road-networks and make it more 
generic and allow any national road networks to be discussed.


I have cross posted in inquiry about this on postGIS and 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  and there seems to be quite some interest. I also 
expect that an archive of these discussions would be of interest to new 
comers in the future.


I am happy to take on the role of list owner and/or moderator.

Can someone help we get this setup. I'm posting this here because mail 
to [EMAIL PROTECTED] is failing at the moment.


Best regards,
  -Stephen Woodbridge
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] WMS Tile Cutter

[Stephen Woodbridge]

John Zastrow wrote:
I don't think I dreamed this: Some time a go I swear I saw a method for 
cutting a static image (like a GeoTiff) into tiles which would then be 
served by some light-weight server that would respond to WMS requests. 
Period. I need to just send a small number of static tiles from Tomcat 
to OpenLayers.


Did I dream this, or did someone in the OSgeo-sphere actually post a 
recipe for this?


From the GDAL List:

http://www.klokan.cz/projects/gdal2tiles/

-Steve W
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