NumFOCUS is pleased to announce the newest addition to our fiscally sponsored projects: GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library)
GDAL is an access and translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats, often known as the Swiss army knife of geospatial. It is released under an X/MIT style Open Source License.
The project has been governed since 2006 by a diverse Project Steering Committee (PSC) with a charter under the auspices of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Joining NumFOCUS, GDAL will have access to the beneficial services of a non-profit fiscal sponsor and a valuable connection with NumFOCUS’s project network of foundational data science and scientific computing tools.
From Frank Warmerdam, founder of GDAL: —
“I am excited that with GDAL’s association with NumFOCUS and the sustained support of many industry sponsors the GDAL project is well positioned for a third decade as a key piece of geospatial infrastructure in a way less dependent on a few heroic developers.”
As a library, GDAL presents a single raster abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. GDAL currently manages more than 250 formats, databases, protocols or web services. It is a critical piece of data management and processing infrastructure for hundreds of open source, commercial, and government geospatial software.
From Even Rouault, current maintainer of GDAL and Project Steering Committee Chair: —
“The GDAL project is thrilled with joining NumFOCUS as a fiscally sponsored project and the opportunities it will provide for the growth and continued sustainty of a project with a twenty year history. We expect the support will help us grow our community by providing an even more robust, faster and feature-full geospatial data abstraction and access library.”
With the addition of GDAL, the NumFOCUS fiscal sponsorship program now encompasses 43 open source scientific computing projects and is continuing to grow.
From Leah Silen, Executive Director of NumFOCUS: —
“NumFOCUS is proud to welcome GDAL as our newest sponsored project! We recognize GDAL’s impact as a vital tool in geospatial data management and look forward to supporting efforts to ensure its long-term maintenance.“
You can support GDAL by contributing code or making a donation!
NumFOCUS is a US 501(c)(3) public charity. Our mission is to promote open practices in research, data, and scientific computing by serving as a fiscal sponsor for open source projects and organizing community-driven educational programs. NumFOCUS envisions an inclusive scientific and research community that utilizes actively supported open source software to make impactful discoveries for a better world. To learn more visit numfocus.org.
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