Looking Back, Looking Forward: FOSS4G North America and FOSS4G Global

Dear Reader,

What makes a good conference?  Or how should a conference be graded in terms of the value it brings not only to attendees and sponsors, but to the larger geospatial community?

A month ago, approximately 400 attendees and 25 sponsors collaborated at FOSS4G North America for 3 days in Reston, VA on all things geospatial open-source- From 100+ technical talks featuring use cases, state of software, and new developments around common themes such as AI/ML integration and cloud native deployment, with all of the core values inherent in open-source geospatial: Full control over software, interoperability and open standards, performance, and the ever-important cost advantages and ROI of integrating open-source.

GeoSolutions is proud to take a leading role in contributing to these discussions and the overall open-source geo “movement”, from the perspective of core code developers and maintainers of GeoNode, GeoServer, and MapStore and our nearly 20 years of supporting enterprises and governments with integrating open-source.  Most of the conversations we had at FOSS4GNA involved government and commercial folks asking, “How can we reduce our operating costs of using proprietary GIS software by integrating open-source”?  The answer: Proprietary open-source is definitely not “one size fits all”, and the solution is to road map out which components of your geospatial software stack could (should?) be replaced with open-source.  This is rarely an “all one thing, or all the other” or “zero-sum game” consideration:  That’s where open-source lives: Providing more control over your application while guaranteeing interoperability with those proprietary components that will not (or should not?) be replaced, all while reducing opex.  It’s hybridization, if not full replacement.  This is the essence of most of the business conversations we have on a daily basis.

FOSS4G North America featured an enlightening keynote by Bruce Momjian, Co-founder of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group (with a long history supporting PostgreSQL) – titled, “The Democracy of Databases“.  Bruce’s presentation focused on the history of governing structures, specifically autocratic forms of government in comparison to democratic forms of government, and the parallels in software development between proprietary and open-source where, of course, open-source software is the more democratic model for software development.  Since the 1800’s, autocracy has been a prominent, consistent form of government. In other words, it’s not going away, and likely never will.  Nor will proprietary software.  So the question becomes; “How does open-source co-exist, if not thrive, with the existence of more autocratic forms of software development powers that be”?

Bruce’s keynote emphasized the benefits of positioning technological capabilities and talent closer to the problem.  While somewhat “sloppy”, or “unorganized” in comparison to more rigid, top-down autocratically developed software, open-source provides the agile control required to flexibly and more effectively address problems, allowing for customization at each phase of the data pipeline to zero-in on exactly what the end users or analysts need, as opposed to paying for features that are not needed. This is where we thrive and this is the message to the broader community.  The challenge is familiarity, education, community connectivity, and engagement across a massive and diverse, distributed, and loosely connected community of communities, providing for knowledge transfer from those who’ve successfully integrated open-source to those who are trying to do it, or perhaps don’t know where to start.  It’s getting beyond the pockets of open-source geo experts and users, spreading that message and providing a successful roadmap to the broader community. This is the democracy of open-source software and we are more energized than ever to join the many leaders, sponsors, experts, contributors, and users in continuing to lead the outreach, education, and community building necessary to support open-source adoption.  FOSS4GNA is more than a 3 day conference…it’s a year-round phenomenon!

For those who were unable to make it to FOSS4GNA this year, Project Geospatial does a great job recording, producing, and preserving keynotes and technical talks from not only FOSS4GNA, but FedGeoDay and other conferences as well.  Recordings from FOSS4GNA will be located here.

About us

At GeoSolutions, we are the core code developers and experts behind:

• GeoServer, the leading open source server to publish geospatial data at scale.
• MapStore, our modular open source WebGIS product to create and publish geospatial data as maps, dashboards and geo stories.
• GeoNode, the open source GIS platform to create a complete and interoperable spatial data infrastructure.

If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you achieve your needs through our Enterprise Support Services, Professional Training Services and Subscription Services  please contact us!

The GeoSolutions team,