Open Source Geospatial Foundation Selects Tyler Mitchell

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, has hired Tyler Mitchell hired as its new executive director. Mitchell-who has a decade of GIS experience as an analyst, manager, open source advocate and author-will be responsible for the Foundation's day-to-day operations, supporting development and promotion.

An independent not-for-profit legal entity established to support the needs of the open source geospatial community, OSGeo serves as an outreach and advocacy organisation. Since its inception in February 2006, OSGeo has met with encouraging success with local chapters forming around the world.

Mitchell began his GIS career in British Columbia forestry in 1996, where he performed GIS analysis and research for natural resource management. He has been using open source software for nearly a decade, with a particular focus on the Linux operating system and geospatial tools including MapServer, PostGIS, and other applications and libraries. In 2005, Mitchell wrote Web Mapping Illustrated: Using Open Source GIS Toolkits which was published by O'Reilly Media. Tyler is a well known international speaker and open source advocate-in 2004 he began proposing an independent foundation for open source geospatial technologies and has been a dedicated volunteer ever since.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The Foundation provides financial, organisational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit.

OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organisation for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The foundation's projects are all freely available and usable under OSI-certified open source licenses.