Open Source GIS

Software Projects

GRASS (Geographical Resources Analysis Support System) is the earliest OSGIS, which reached production status and supported both raster and vector data. It was originally developed from 1982 to 1995 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and since then by the international GRASS Development Team. Initially published as public domain software, its license was changed to GNU GPL (General Public License; see http://www.gnu.org) in 1999, one of the commonly used Free Software licenses. The GPL ensures that modified or new source code must be published again under the GPL. In the 1990s, further desktop and server OSGIS software projects were established in various GIS sectors, including libraries (PROJ4, GDAL/OGR, GEOS, Geotools, Geoserver), Desktop GIS (Quantum GIS, SAGA GIS, uDIG, gvSIG, ILWIS), Web mapping/WebGIS (Mapserver, MapGuide Open Source, degree), spatial SQL (Structured Query Language) databases (PostGIS), geostatistics (gstat, R Project for Statistical Computing), and metadata catalogs (Geonetwork opensource).

Organizations

In 1992, several organizations were merged into the Open GRASS Foundation (OGF) with the scope to expand private sector developments for GRASS, to manage memberships, and to recruit sponsors from government, the private sector, and academia. The spread of GIS raised the need for data sharing and interoperability. With more industrial companies joining, OGF was restructured as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in 1994 with a focus on interoperability and geospatial standards.

The increasing number of OSGIS projects led in 2006 to the creation of the Open Source Geo-spatial Foundation (http://www.osgeo.org), whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies, data, and educational material.