Geo-Community

From MapbenderWiki

(Lesen Sie die deutschsprachige Version von Anwendergemeinschaften)

This year will see the growth of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation as one of the most intriguing and exciting processes for, with and around the "Geo-Community".

The "Geo-Community" is the total of all users, developers, contributors and people in the spatial sector. This term is most broadly inclusive. A steadily growing subset of the "Geo-Community" is the Free and Open Source Software Community which is currently creating the Foundation. This Wiki focuses on the Open Source and Free Software communities. Check out the User Mailing Lists to get an insight on what is going on. It is incomplete but may give a first overview.

Free as in Free Thought and Collaboration apply both to Free Software projects and people furthering the collection, maintenance and diessemination of Spatial Data. Both groups go well together. It is rather more than that, they need each other for further development. Collaboration efforts are great but sometimes stymied by the sheer amount of people contributing. There are so many projects, initiatives, companies and individuals that it is hard to get an overview. One of the major tasks for the near future will include simplifying the use of standard interfaces by wrapping up specifications in softwre packages. In order to use an OGC WMS map service it should not be necessaary to understand how it works. The Mapbender Portal focuses on doing this. Additionally it tries to birdge the gap between the developers group and the data collectors by using basic Wiki concepts.