[Mapserver-west] Fwd: MapServer Foundation - Open Letter

[Tyler Mitchell]

Hi all, 
In case you didn't already see this ground-breaking announcement...

Tyler

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] MapServer Foundation - Open Letter
Date: November 28, 2005 05:37
From: Steve Lime <steve.lime at dnr.state.mn.us>
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

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