One of the great things about being a journalist is that people pull you aside and say, "You have to see this!" This time the software in question was gvSIG and person doing the pulling was a former colleague. I've already written about gvGIS for an OGC publication. That provides much of the background.

It's been two years since I wrote that piece and last week, I had a chance to meet with many of the 10 person contingent from Spain who represented the project at FOSS4G. They provided a some interesting updates, numbers and insights.

- The team includes two rather large main contractors and a host of smaller ones. There are also volunteers. That's about 40 developers, with total staff (including management) at about 70-80.

- The current funding includes E12 million that runs from 2007 until 2013.

- There are 1000 subscribers on the project list, and the project has been downloaded 70,000 times.

- The plan for success included the idea of starting small, proving the result worked and growing the project from there. The guiding principle is "we have to share knowledge" and the group is anxious to show the success of this new model for collaboration.

- The original users, whose regional government required a move to open source software under Linux, had been ArcView users. Thus, gvSIS looks like ArcView. And, like ArcView it has lots of extensions. The ones ticked off by the team rivaled the list available for ArcView 3 in its prime. One of the stronger (and most popular) includes CAD-like editing with a command line (like AutoCAD and MicroStation).

- gvSIG supports all sorts of databases: PostGIS, MySQL, Oracle, ArcSDE and serves as a client to many map servers: WMS, WFS, Gazeteer, ArcIMS, GeoRSS.

- gvSIG is also a development platform that can be customized using Python, and other scripting tools.

- Upcoming extensions include: more advanced/complete network analysis, 3D, animation, enhanced symbology, raster analysis, geostatistics, mobile...

- gvSIG supports multiple languages from a pull-down.

- The 3rd gvSIG Conference is November 14-16 in the Valencia Conference Centre in Spain.

More random notes/quote from FOSS4G 2007:

"There isn't one presenation I've had to walk out of..."

There's no open source photogrammetry nor surveying software, so far as I know. Why? Too small a community? Niche market? Will there ever be open source software in these areas?

Best give away: The Safe Software Spork - a single tool for the job. (But you do get two, otherwise it's tough to use knife.)

Did you know the history of the ADS 40 sensor? It was designed as an aerial/space sensor and in its early days was to be to be used on a Mars mission (1996). The first one ended up in a failed launch and it's companion was put on an airplane and viola, one of the most widely used aerial senors! I learned that over lunch from a guy who worked on the original.

Steve Lime (of MapServer "fame") was awarded the Sol Katz Award this year. Frank Warmerdam's (himself a winner of the award) noted it was as much for Steve's technical contributions as for his ability to create and maintain community. Steve was quick to note that the award was really for the MapServer community.

I moderated the final panel, so alas it is difficult to cover in any detail. The two running themes/jokes? "GIS is dead" and "GIS need not be thought of as stand alone but as part of everything else." Neither of these are exactly new ideas, but it seems we all needed to hear them again. I also did a recap to close the event (just before two Nanos were awarded) which will appear in Directions next week.

Next year we go to Cape Town, South Africa, September 29 to October 3, 2008. I know many folks are concerned about the challenge of travel. Yes, it's far from many places (but closer to others!) so start saving your pennies now. The preview from Gavin Fleming, the chair of the event suggested this will be a very special event with the theme GIS for Developing Nations and a focus on outreach and education. Further, it will be paired with the local GIS conference meaning a big mix of proprietary and open source users and technology will mix.

I spent a few minutes with an ESRI staffer involved with the move to support PostGreSQL (an open source database that's widely used for spatial via Refractions Research's PostGIS). Here's the plan which he stressed is tentative. He noted too that its in early development, so alas was not available to demo at FOSS4G.

Timing

PostGres support is expected with ArcGIS 9.3 next year (Q1 or Q2).

Requirements

Support is planned with Enterprise ArcSDE, which means users will need ArcGIS Server Enterprise Basic at a minumum.

Spatial Types

The support will include both the PostGIS spatial type and ESRI's own implementation of spatial in the database.

Functionality

All the existing ArcSDE funtionality (versioning, transactions, etc.) will be supported. And, there will be SQL access to the geometry (which is based on OGC Simple Features).

Platforms

Windows Server 2000/2003, Red Hat Linux ES/AS both 32 and 64 bit, SUSE, Solaris.

Feedback

ESRI is very interested in feedback and those interested are pointed to the soon-to-exist ESRI product forum for the beta.

The exhibit area at FOSS4G wouldn't rival a show like GITA, bit it was hopping. Here are some of the tidbits I learned from exhibitors.

Sierra Systems

Sierra Systems is an IT consulting group in North America with about 25 geospatial folks. A big believer in standards, the company did its homework on open source convincing itself it was a viable option for geospatial. Internally, the company is moving steadily to Linux and open source, but it respects its clients requirements. Still, when called up to offer strategic directions to clients like the Integrated Land Management Bureau (something like the BLM of Canada) open source is offered as an option.

Timberline

Timberline is Tyler Mitchell's "old" company, a company focused on natural resources management. The company uses a mix of proprietary and open source (PostGIS/Grass/MapServer) to serve its clients. The big limitation in open source? Creating top notch cartographic output. For that, the company uses ESRI technology. For many other geospatial tasks, open source is the choice in part due to speed. The Timberline rep also noted the diversity in the attendees this way "from game developers to academics."

Some things I overheard/thought/noticed on the first full conference day:

"If ESRI had 't existed we would be 10 years ahead of where we are now"
[Unnattributed quote is back. It was on vacation while I researched it further. Removed 9/25. I removed the "(OSGeo)" after "we" because that was my interpret, which is not really fair in the situation. Why is this happening? After I posted the quote, someone from whom I didn't hear it wanted to clarify it. So, I had to confirm from whom I did hear it...]

One attendee shared that the big issue in the move from proprietary to open source didn't have anything to do with functionality, but rather the learning curve.

The demo theatre is all live demos - no "slideware."

In one session I attended with two EDU papers and one PPGIS paper, the room filled to nearly overflow for the latter.

I'd never heard of Conway before, but he's a famous PERL guy and author. It was clear from his title this presentation was "old:" Geek Eye for the Suit Guy. Further, based on its "slickness," he does it regularly.

That said, his one hour talk, focussed on getting us "geeks" up to speed on how to convince the "suits" about open source using and emotional/rational/money argument was very funny. It may have been too funny such that the audience wasn't ready to question anything in it. First he outlined how businesses work (I paraphrase without adult terms):

Businesses exploit something/someone (which doesn't know its value), raise the price and resell it for more.

The bulk of the talk, the part everyone seemed to be writing down (I was asked by several people to share my notes) for later were the ten questions/challenges geeks need to answer for suits once they consider open source as a viable option. This is a quick summary:

(1) But SCO owns UNIX?
(A) No, that whole thing was a business play by SCO to raise the price before management dumpted the stock. Oh, and if they acutally did (the court said they didn't recently) the open source community would code around it.