[Mapserver-DE] [Fwd: [Fwd: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] MapServer Foundation - Open Letter]]

[Peter Stamm]

moin,
folgende Nachricht leite ich zur Information mal an die Listen weiter..

-------------------

hi,
the following mail for your information..


gruß,
regards,

Peter


-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: [Fwd: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] MapServer Foundation - Open Letter]
Datum: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:11:47 +0100 (CET)
Von: adams at terrestris.de
Antwort an: adams at terrestris.de
An: paulsen at terrestris.de, jansen at terrestris.de, hellmich at terrestris.de, 
geilhausen at terrestris.de, geo-consortium at ccgis.de


Bemerkenswert! Mal sehen was das gibt.....

Ich finde, das könnte man als Open Letter auf die Firmen- und Gc Homepage
stellen!

Till ;-)


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] MapServer Foundation - Open Letter
From:    "Steve Lime" <steve.lime at DNR.STATE.MN.US>
Date:    Mon, November 28, 2005 2:37 pm
To:      MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Open Letter to the MapServer Open Source Web Mapping Community

November 28, 2005

Greetings MapServer community,

We are pleased to share with you some exciting news about the future of
open source web mapping.

Over the past few years MapServer adoption has grown ten-fold and has
become the web mapping platform of choice for many businesses, government
agencies, nonprofit groups and individuals. The MapServer developers have
added powerful new features. The community has enjoyed three incredible
conferences and continues to support each other and enhance the community.

We want to ensure that this success and momentum continues for the
MapServer product and community. MapServer continues to run well in
diverse environments and its rich set of features play an indispensable
role in many organizations. More than ever, we are committed to improving
MapServer and providing exceptional value to the community.

To this end, we take this opportunity to share two bits of news: the
creation of the MapServer Foundation and welcoming the addition of
Autodesk's next-generation web mapping platform (previously known as Tux)
as open source into the foundation.

MapServer Foundation

We are delighted to announce the creation of the MapServer Foundation
(mapserverfoundation.org). The foundation is a nonprofit organization
whose goal is to provide a supportive framework for open, collaborative
development of geospatial software. Several groups and individuals are
collaborating to help launch and sponsor the new foundation. Financial
support from Autodesk will allow us to get the foundation up and running.
In this letter, we present some ideas of how we think the foundation can
help the community, but these ideas need broader discussion and debate
within the community.

We looked to other successful open source movements, such as Apache, to
see how our community could benefit from the creation of an independent
foundation. It is clear that the time has come to create a formal
infrastructure to help further support and promote the professional open
source web mapping development environments and communities. While
initially focused on web mapping projects, we hope the foundation will
adopt other open source geospatial projects that need a home.

Forming the foundation is only the beginning, as we now seek community
involvement and participation. The foundation will have a governance model
that allows it to be run by a Board of Directors that represents the
community. How it is ultimately going to be run is up to the members of
the community. The foundation will also have a set of bylaws that provide
structure and can be amended through a community voting process.

Role of the foundation

The first priority for the foundation is to engage the broader MapServer
community. Members of the community are encouraged to join and get
involved. Consider this letter as your invitation to participate. The
community web site is the place where you, as a user and participant in
the community, can follow and contribute to the development of the
MapServer Foundation family of projects.

The primary responsibilities of the foundation may include:

     * Support code repository and other project infrastructure
     * Formalized process for decision-making (e.g. where to host the next
conference) * Legal protection for the source code and developers of
the software * Paying for development work on minor improvements of
the platform * Acting as a central repository for marketing, branding
and professional image development of the product * Providing process
for mitigating disputes
     * Financial support for advocacy, sponsorship, community events and
conferences

Many of these community-related functions have been overseen in an ad-hoc
manner or deferred to the University of Minnesota or other organizations
in the past. The foundation will streamline the coordination of legal,
administrative and governance efforts.

As MapServer will now be officially managed by the foundation, it no
longer makes sense to call it UMN MapServer. Product branding is also
becoming more important and this is a good opportunity to introduce a more
visual name for the product. We propose calling it MapServer Cheetah. This
presents a fast and agile image that suits the product well and will help
differentiate it from other MapServer products.

MapServer Cheetah & MapServer Enterprise

We are also very excited about Autodesk's decision to release their next
generation web mapping platform into the open source community through the
MapServer Foundation. This adds further legitimacy to our open source
development platform. Their product will be named MapServer Enterprise and
is the successor to Autodesk MapGuide but built on an entirely new
architecture.

MapServer Enterprise and MapServer Cheetah will be run as two separate but
parallel projects. There are no plans to merge them into one but we aim to
share technologies between the two projects wherever possible. We also
hope to provide utilities that allow the community to easily use one or
both platforms.

MapServer Enterprise will be licensed using the OSI-approved GNU Lesser
General Public License (LGPL). MapServer Cheetah will continue to be
licensed under an MIT-style open source license. Autodesk is eager to
participate in an open and transparent development process driven by
independent guidance from the community. We encourage you to check out
MapServer Enterprise, which is available today on the community web site.

We are proud to be part of this community and we hope you will join us in
establishing the MapServer Foundation. For more information on how to get
involved, please visit the community site at: mapserverfoundation.org and
join the mailing list discussions.

Sincerely,

Steve Lime, Chair, MapServer Technical Steering Committee (MTSC)
Yewondwossen Assefa, MTSC Member
Howard Butler, MTSC Member
Daniel Morissette, MTSC Member
Perry Nacionales, MTSC Member
Frank Warmerdam, MTSC Member
Tom Burk, University of Minnesota
David McIlhagga, DM Solutions Group
Tyler Mitchell
Claude Philipona, Camptocamp SA and FOSS4G 2006 organizing committee Gary
Lang, Autodesk




-- 
mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Peter Stamm

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