OSGeo Local Chapter D-A-CH

Anschreiben zur Bewerbung als Local Chapter D-A-CH

Application as German Language Local Chapter (D-A-CH) of OSGeo

Dear OSGeo Board, Tyler Mitchell,

the German language community about Free and Open Source Software concerning Geographical Information Systems is active since 1999 and plays an irreplaceable role in the worldwide community. We provide a lot of vital and important parts to this community:

• the Portal freegis.org was founded and maintained since 1999 and gives a reliable overview about the possibilities of Free GIS;

• the non-profit and registered association GRASS-Anwender-Vereinigung (GAV) was founded 2000 and worked since this time to promote the aims of OSGeo long before the establishment of OSGeo itself. This year the GAV renamed itself into FOSSGIS e.V. to strengthen the public visibility;

• since 2006 a yearly conference is held in Germany to show the latest developments of FOSSGIS and set up a forum to spread the information about capabilities and advantages of FOSSGIS. The conference expands every year and reached in 2008 a new visitor record (approx. 500);

• a lot of projects of OSGeo are supported by people esp. in Germany (GRASS, QGIS, Mapbender, deegree);

• several appearances of OSGeo and FOSSGIS e.V. took place at conferences in D-A-CH countries in the past years (InterGeo, AGIT);

• various universities and local institutions are using and promoting FOSSGIS (FH Nordwestschweiz, Kanton Solothurn, Uni and FH Osnabrück, Uni Hannover, ...);

The FOSSGIS e.V., an incorporated and non-profit organization with aims similar to OSGeo.org therefore submits as part of the German language community the official expression of interest to form the D-A-CH Local Chapter of OSGeo with legal seat in Germany according to the German legislation. The spatial distribution of this Local Chapter is defined through the German language (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). The main entrance point for the German Local Chapter will be the Website http://www.fossgis.de .

The aims of the Local Chapter are following those outlined at http://www.osgeo.org/content/chapters/guidelines.html

We propose myself (Georg Lösel) as official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board.

with regards,

Dr. Georg Lösel

Chairman FOSSGIS e.V.

Previous Activities in OSGeo, especially D-A-CH

Most of the people listed on the DACH Member List have either been involved directly with the organization of the FOSSGIS conference or are already members of FOSSGIS e.V. or OSGeo or both. There also seems to be general consensus by most people who are not member of the FOSSGIS e.V. yet that this application is worth supporting. After this application has been approved we will try to merge the two lists as their missions are perfectly compatible and membership overlap is already big.