
The crowd that was lucky enough to be able to go to Chicago was partly funded by Autodesk. A big thanks for this and all the support that we received form Autodesk over the next years. At that time I chose to pay for travel and hotel on my own to demonstrate independence from Autodesk. But what is independence? It is an illusion because in the end everything is connected. My funding came from my own company CCGIS which later merged into the WhereGroup and became a trendsetter for geospatial Free and Open Source Software adoption in Germany. Thanks for having me.
But to be honest, most of the work done to get the idea of OSGeo form and then the Foundation off the ground depended on the folks around MapServer, the developers, businesses and user community. The founders of MapServer squarely took the bashing of their own community after having started the MapServer Foundation just somewhat too secretly. They deserve our respect for having gone through the whole "What's in a name?" discussion. Jo Walsh's on being in a foundation blog on Mappinghacks sheds some light on the first steps we took and what we did right and where we could have done better. She also was the first and so far only woman on the OSGeo Board of Directors. One of the characteristics about OSGeo and Open Source in general which still bugs me a bit. But we will have many more years to further explore and eventually amend this.


So now we have a solid Foundation up and running with more and more projects inside and around OSGeo, referencing and using each other, many capable of using OpenStreetMap and tapping into other data through OGC standards. I am looking forward for many years to come and my only worry right now is that younger folks will eventually perceive us as solidly sclerotic and rather than fighting for new stuff inside OSGeo will go elsewhere in frustration. We should always keep in mind that things change and evolution is a good thing.
Thanks to all of us for making all of this possible!
And never forget to have fun doing IT!