FOSS4G-CEE 2013: Program published!

Join us at FOSS4G Central and Eastern Europe (FOSS4G-CEE) 2013 from 16th - 20th June, National Library of Romania, Bucharest, Romania.

You will meet well known Keynote Speakers (random order): Jeff McKenna, Paul C. Smits, Jáchym Čepický, Schuyler Erle, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Dirk Frigne, Markus Neteler, Alyssa Wright, and Radu Puchiu.

Check the long list of Practical Workshops and Oral Presentations at: http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/program/schedule
Check out for the additional Code Sprint, the Open GeoData Hackathon, and the Open Data Side Event.

How to arrive? See http://2013.foss4g-cee.org/venue/map

Back home from heart surgery

Disclaimer: strictly offtopic :) Just a personal health state report, nutshell version...

Maybe some have notes my temporal "disappearance" from email and such in January. The reason was that I spent almost 50 days in hospital since beginning of December. So, what happened?

On 10th December I went to the "Centro Gallucci" of the Padua University Hospital for "routine" examinations in preparation for a future surgery (I know of my heart problems for years; they did not have much effect on my life since I was asymptomatic). But after the initial examinations they scheduled me for an emergency surgery. Err, little shock...

Eventually, I got the open heart surgery on 3rd January ("Bentall-De Bono" method, 7hs of surgery in total, 2hs heart in standstill). During the surgery they realized that the heart state was even worse than known before, with an estimated life expectancy of perhaps months only not having it done immediately (they got me from the cliff). Anyway, the surgery went well, I have now a mechanical valve + ascending aorta (so, you can hear me now :p). BTW: you go in awake, the Padua staff was really nice. And interesting to see how they prepare the surgery, a busy moment (then send make you sleep in no time).

On 10th January I was send to the rehabilitation center (Codivilla-Putti hospital, Cortina d'Ampezzo). However, I got a complication which is not uncommon: inner bleedings with a starting cardiac tamponade as discovered some days later. On 14th January, during heavy snowfall at Cortina, high speed ambulance ride back to Padua, with immediate drainage surgery (lung area and heart, removing more than 2l of liquid). Not really fun... (this little surgery also on a Monday, same time, same room, same staff!). But after some days I got way better. Just 10% of my body weight was meanwhile gone.

On 23rd January I was brought back again to the Cortina rehabilitation center where I spend two nice weeks - no more issues so far :-)

Since 5th February I am back home - and will stay here for a longer while. Various odds and ends need to be resolved first - the recovery is long but steady!

GRASS GIS 6.4.3RC2 source code and selected binaries released

A second release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 with improvements and stability fixes is now available.

Source code:
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.3RC2.tar.gz

Selected Binaries (more will be published)

• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/native/WinGRASS-6.4.3RC2-1-Setup.exe
• http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-grass
• http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton/files/grass_mac/OSX10.6-snowleopard/GRASS-6.4.3RC2.pkg.zip
• http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tzotsos:/Application:/Geo/

To get the RC2 source code from SVN:
 svn checkout https://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20121218_grass_6_4_3RC2/

An announcement has been drafted at
 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.4.3RC2-News

Key improvements of the GRASS 6.4.3 release include some new functionality (image processing tools), major speedup for some vector modules, fixes for the wxPython based portable graphical interface, improvements for the Python API, enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support), and more translations.

Release candidate management at
 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass6Planning

Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.

Thanks to all contributors!

Jeff McKenna new President of the OSGeo Foundation

The OSGeo Board of Directors have named Jeff McKenna as its new President. The previous President, Frank Warmerdam, has stepped down, and the OSGeo Board is extremely grateful for his leadership. Mr. McKenna brings years of experience in the geospatial industry, and has been involved in the MapServer web mapping project since its early days. He was also one of the founding forces behind the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) international conference, and has dedicated himself to promoting the use of Open Source geospatial software through FOSS4G events all around the world.

Mr. McKenna explains, “I'm honored to be named as the new President of OSGeo. I plan to continue the wonderful work of our past presidents Frank and Arnulf. The OSGeo community is now thriving and vibrant, with FOSS4G regional events operating all across the world; I plan to continue spreading this passion for Open Source geospatial, and help introduce our knowledge to both decision makers and technical users.  Decision makers all around the world should be exposed to our experts through our communities, our regional events, our local chapters, and also through our professional service providers.  There is much work still to be done in spreading our knowledge of Open Source geospatial through all of these networks.”

The GRASS GIS team will organize a GRASS GIS Community Sprint from 2-7 Feb, 2013 in Genova, Italy. The sprint is at the same time of the "XIV Meeting degli Utenti Italiani GRASS e Gfoss" at the University of Genova.

We would like to invite you to financially support this upcoming Community Sprint! The past sprints have been very successful as we expect for the upcoming one.

Important Web page:
http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Genova_2013

Please consider to donate:
http://grass.osgeo.org/donations/

Background info
The GRASS GIS Community Sprint is a great occasion for folks to support the development by actively contributing to the source code, manuals or likewise. The community sprint is a get-together for GRASS project members and supporters and related OSGeo projects to take decisions and tackle larger problems. For this meeting, we welcome people committed to improving the GRASS GIS project and the interfaces to QGIS, GDAL, PostGIS, R-stats. Sextante. gvSIG, OGC Services and more. This includes developers, documenters, bug reporters, translators and other OSGeo supporters. Not only the "C Tribe" will be addressed but also Python or whatever the participants prefer.

ArcGIS vs QGIS etc Clipping Contest Rematch revisited

Earlier this Last year, in June, Don Meltz wrote an interesting blog "ArcGIS vs QGIS Clipping Contest Rematch" where he let compete ArcGIS and Quantum GIS in a clipping contest. The benchmark contest data set in question is a 878MB ZIP file (ContourClipTest.zip). The blog page gained a lot of comments, even from ESRI since some ArcGIS versions crashed on this test data set.

Find below the various timings compiled from the blog and the comments:

Proprietary software

Software	Processing time	Hardware/Software
ArcGIS 9.3	crash after 1h 9min: ERROR 999999: Error executing function. Invalid Topology [4gb file limit.] Failed to execute (Clip)	unknown
ArcGIS 10.0	crash likewise	unknown
ArcGIS 10.1	ESRI promise to calculate it in 34 seconds in this updated version (did anyone test?)	unknown
GlobalMapper (version?)	30 mins	unknown
GlobalMapper v11.02	49 sec	Windows XP w/ 3.5GB RAM
Manifold 8 (64bit)	31 min	Windows XP64 16 gb. RAM and 2.33 GHz

Note: The two GlobalMapper results are a bit funny, perhaps always minutes?

Free and Open Source Software

Software	Processing time	Hardware/Software
Quantum GIS (version?; Simple features)	4-5 min	unknown
GRASS GIS 7 (topological GIS)	5 min	Dell PowerEdge 2950 from 2008, Intel Xeon 2.66GHz, 8GB RAM
gvSIG	to be done
PostGIS	to be done

Notes: Hope volunteers will test this also on gvSIG and PostGIS (and other FOSSGIS)! Please report...

GFOSSDAY 2012 + OSMit2012 @ Torino, Italy with GRASS GIS workshop

The program of the GFOSSDAY 2012 + OSMit2012 @ Torino, Italy, has been published:
http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday2012/programma

We offer there a GRASS GIS workshop on Friday 16th Nov 2012 at 9:30. You are welcome!

Location:
Centro Incontri Regione Piemonte, Corso Stati Uniti 23, Torino, Italy