Open Source Computing and GIS in the UK

I imagine I’m not alone in having parents and grandparents who don’t really understand what I do for a living. “I work in computing and do stuff with maps” is the easy approach (in fact it’s easier now that I don’t have to tag on the bit about being an archaeologist but not actually digging, and no it’s not like Time Team or Indiana Jones). Sometimes people ask why we don’t just “do everything with google maps”, which is the cue for a sit down and a longer chat about how (deep breath) you can’t do *everything* with google. So far, so good…

This all changed a couple of weeks ago, when, to my surprise I got elected to the Board of Directors of OSGeo. Cue shock, and great rejoicing (and in my head at least, tearful Oscars-style acceptance speeches). Mr Archaeogeek thinks this is cool enough to tell parents, grandparents, family friends etc. I do too, don’t get me wrong, but…

How to explain what it means to people who don’t use computers all that much, let alone know about gis, or open source or OSGeo?

There have been a few good articles on how to explain why you work in open source (the “how do you make money?” argument), but I feel like I need to go further back and explain about software licensing. I don’t think that most people really understand the difference between the way software is sold/licensed, and most other products, so I’m working on a car analogy that explains why open source software needs to exist. It goes something like:

“Can you imagine, that if you brought a car, and something went wrong with it, you couldn’t lift up the bonnet and take a look? Or if you did need to take it to a garage you had to use the one the car salesman told you to use? Or after 2 years they told you that they wouldn’t support your old car any longer, and you had to buy a new one? Or you couldn’t insure more than one person to drive it, but had to buy a new car for each person? Well that’s sort of what closed-source software is like”

(Note this is an analogy-in-progress)

Once that’s out of the way, then I can get on to gis, and hence to OSGeo, and all is fine!

Woefully out of date now, here’s a quick run down on the OSGIS 2011 conference, 3rd in that series, held at the University of Nottingham Centre for Geospatial Sciences in Nottingham over the 21st and 22nd of June.

The 21st was a day of workshops, under the banner of Interoperability and the OGC. My new colleague, Matt, and I did a workshop on using Ordnance Survey Open Data and Mastermap with Mapserver and PostgreSQL, using the OSGeo Live DVD. You can see a slightly edited version of the workshop below, or on slideshare. I have to admit that most of the kudos must go to Matt for creating some super scripts to make the initial data processing *much* easier, and to some of my other colleagues for their efforts in styling the data once it’s in Mapserver. The scripts and a small subset of the open data are available here- you’ll have to supply your own Mastermap!

Day Two was all about the talks- and I was impressed by the standard. The focus of OSGIS has always leant slightly towards the academic, so the stand-out talks for me were the ones that demonstrated that you can do real spatial analysis with open source GIS. There were also some very good papers on mapping in the developing world. Two of my ex-colleagues from Oxford Archaeology also did a joint paper showing how the use of open source software has progressed there- that was really good to see- it was nice to know that the baton had been passed on when I left! I gave people an introduction to the OSGeo:UK local chapter, which is also available on Slideshare here, and we had the chapter AGM. It’s extremely gratifying to see the numbers of people willing to hear about, and get involved with, the local chapter. I was going back through the reports I’d given in previous years, and the numbers of people signed up to our mailing list steadily creep up, year on year- we’re now well over the 100 people mark! (BTW, if you’re interested, our website is here).

All in all it was a really good couple of days. Next year the conference will be running from the 4th to the 5th of September, so for anyone that can’t make FOSS4G and wants to give OSGIS a try, now’s your chance!

So, it’s 5 years since OSGeo was formed- that’s pretty cool! Spurred on by this post, I thought I would say a little bit about my involvement with OSGeo, and also rather clumsily segue this into an announcement about my impending change of job. It’s true- after years of not really thinking of myself as an archaeologist any longer, but rather ‘someone who works in an archaeological unit”, I’ve finally gone and got myself a real job. Anyhow, more on that later.

5 years ago, I was playing around with mapserver, because I wanted a way of serving data and some shiny web maps and we had no money to do it with. I sucked at it big time, with no programming experience, and barely any command line experience. My only linux knowledge consisted of messing around with a Sharp Zaurus (the best pda I’ve ever had), and I only really equated open source with “free as in beer”. I remember the excitement on the mapserver mailing list when OSGeo was announced, along with the open sourcing of MapGuide, and I also remember quite fancying the idea of a whole conference about this cool new stuff when FOSS4G was announced.

Since then, there have been so many lightbulb moments for me, such as getting the real “point” of open source, getting more involved with OSGeo via starting the UK chapter, breakthrough moments when I have really started to understand a particular program or language, getting over my fear of public speaking by talking about open source at conferences, teaching colleagues and strangers how to use this software, and getting consultancy jobs designing applications that use it.

Through that time, I’ve seen (heck, we’ve all seen) OSGeo go from strength to strength, and become a truly global organisation. More importantly though, it’s a great global community.

I should also say that my new job, as Web GIS Specialist/Lead Consultant at Astun Technology, could only have happened through the experience I’ve gained over the last five years, so thanks to everyone that’s helped with that. I’m sad to be leaving Oxford Archaeology, but massively looking forward to my new role, which I hope will allow me to keep up my involvement with OSGeo, and in particular the UK chapter.

Will I keep blogging? Yes, and hopefully more often as I learn lots of new and exciting stuff (new to me- I’m a recent very enthusiastic convert to Python-years after everyone else). Will I still be doing open source stuff? Hell, yes! Will I change the name of the blog? Pehaps…

It seems like all I’ve posted about recently is very quick updates on conferences that I’ve been to, and not a lot about what I actually spend most of my time doing. The principal reason for this is being too busy, but that’s getting a bit lame. Once upon a time I used to post lots of tips and tricks about things I’d figured out- sometimes just as a aide memoire after days of trawling through mailing lists and forums. Once upon a time I used to have opinions (sometimes quite strong) on what was going on in the geo-world. It’s time I got back into that mindset, so here goes with a random selection of musings, in no particular order,  from the last few weeks…

• When using mapserver, the path to the log file for debugging must be an absolute path, relative won’t work. This is documented, but I missed it…
• Also when using new versions of mapserver, if making a WMSGetFeatureInfo request from OpenLayers (like this example), you will initially get an error saying that “FORMAT is a required parameter”. This does not occur with Geoserver. You can’t simply add it in the options, because it’s not sent through as part of the request. You have to add it as a vendorParam, but this isn’t well documented.
• Some of my colleagues/ex-colleagues have come up with a great workflow for producing publication-quality cartographic output from QuantumGIS and GvSIG. This is always one of the key excuses for needing expensive software, so it’s nice to give some alternative options. You can find it here, along with our guide for working with survey data in open source GIS. Anna and Christina have been doing some great stuff with open source GIS recently, in the rather more high-pressure world of field excavation rather than the rarified (read lower pressure) geospatial analysis work that I tend to do. What they have proven is that, with relatively small changes in workflow, it is possible to produce high-quality standards-compliant output, as part of a chain of contracters, using these open source packages, where we previously used to rely on proprietary software. Well done guys!
• The ThinkOpen event in Newcastle a few weeks ago (see, I couldn’t resist a quick conference mention) was great fun and very well attended despite falling at the beginning of snowmageddon here in the UK. The focus of the event was on case studies for open source GIS, along with a chance to see some of the new things Ordnance Survey has been doing with it’s OpenSpace and OpenData initiatives. This was the first time I had seen audience electronic voting in a conference- with live results (sometimes).
• The UK chapter of OSGeo is going from strength to strength, mainly thanks to the enthusiasm of the Centre for Geospatial Sciences at Nottingham, and a growing band of dedicated individuals. We’re getting ourselves on a stronger footing now for providing the kind of services that I have always wanted the chapter to provide, and I have high hopes for 2011 onwards!
• I got voted an OSGeo Charter Member a few weeks back, which was a lovely suprise and very much appreciated, given the high number of extremely busy, dedicated candidates. Of course I will continue to do what I can to promote the foundation, particularly since the business case for open source GIS is stronger than ever.
• I am more and more in love with QGIS as my primary GIS package. In the last few releases (1.5 onwards) it seems to have matured tremendously, and a whole series of enhancements have snuck in without me really noticing. If you haven’t tried it recently, download the most recent version- you will be pleasantly suprised! I also love the OSGeo4W setup method. This makes it incredibly easy to keep the software up to date, and to roll out unattended installs across a network.  I have an idea in the back of my mind about extending this to a USB stick, to merge PortableGIS with the OSGeo4W project. However, it’s just an idea at the moment and needs a bit of time to mature…
• I’m teaching a couple of workshops on an Introduction to GIS over the next few weeks (snow permitting), and have been benefiting immensely from the material put out by Linfiniti and others. Much appreciated guys- and I will of course be putting my notes up when they are done.

Phew! Hope that’s enough to keep you all going!