Open Source

OpenStreetMap has been making the news quite a bit since last fall. Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg asks, do you know everything you need to know about this important data project?

The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America (FOSS4GNA) conference was held in Washington, D.C. on April 10-13. Hot on the heels of FOSS4G in Denver last fall and a warm-up for FOSS4G 2012 in Beijing, China, the event drew 360 attendees, with many coming from the local area. 

Use of open source software for geospatial is old hat to some, and still rather new to others. These articles and podcasts from the first quarter of 2012 include some basics,  reviews and industry trends in open source and open data.

Ken Yanow, professor of geographical sciences at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA, is contributing a

How confident are you in your knowledge of open source geospatial software? How about a quick introduction or refresher? Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg offers 10 points that are important to understand about open source software.

Exeucitve Editor Adena Schutzberg picked out the top "Directions on the News" podcasts from the last six months. If you missed them the first time around - here's an opportunity to catch up!

Editor in Chief Joe Francica picked out the top articles from the Directions Magazine archives. The criteria was a balance between "editor's choice" articles, and those that were most popular according to our reader statistics. If you missed them the first time around - here's an opportunity to catch up!

Directions Magazine’s Editor in Chief Joe Francica and Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg batted around .500 on their predictions for 2011. Can they keep up the pace for 2012 and do their bold predictions offer insights into the trends that will shape the geospatial marketplace next year?

This comprehensive, detailed article by Nicolas Gignac of the Québec Ministry of Public Safety describes how the organization is leveraging open source and open standards. This approach helps make it possible for many organizations to work together to quickly locate any incident, analyze hotspots, make simple geospatial requests and maintain a "common operating picture" during incidents by updating geographic features in real-time.

Ken Yanow is a professor of Geographical Sciences at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California and an advocate of open source software in the classroom. In the coming months, he will write a series of articles for Directions Magazine on his experiences with various products in the classroom. In this initial article, he offers an introduction to the use of open source software and why educators might want to consider it.