gvSIG Brazilian Community officially formed

18 May 2010, 5:20pm

April 21st this year, the gvSIG Brazilian Community was constituted officially.

Geomatics has expanded considerably in Brazil in the last years, with a tendency to adopt the open source and free software philosophy by
all of the country. This new technology development model is considered fundamental in the adoption of Geographic Information Systems, because of the high cost of the proprietary software as well as the impossibility to access to its source code and modify it.

In the diverse solutions of Free Geomatics, gvSIG is considered a fundamental tool, by its technical capacities as a Desktop GIS as well
as the organization and sustainability model that it proposes.

The gvSIG Brazilian Community has been created with the aim of spreading gvSIG use in Brazil, encouraging its members to share experiences, supporting the project and promoting its business model.

The first tasks that the Community is tackling are related to the gvSIG development and collaboration in testing and in translation of
the documentation and interface into Brazilian Portuguese.

The following strategic steps have been defined to structure the Community:

- Identification of Brazilian users.

- First gvSIG Brazilian Conference. The necessary tasks to organize this first gvSIG event in Brazil in 2010 are being carried out.

The aim is to know how the institutions, universities and companies are using gvSIG. Moreover, it will be a conference preparatory to the 3rd Latin American and Caribbean gvSIG Conference which will be held in Brazil in 2011.

- Interaction with the OSGeo Community.

The group coordinator of the gvSIG Brazilian Community includes some members of the following institutions: Embrapa Florestas (Maria Augusta Doetzer Rosot and Marilice Cordeiro Garrastazu); International Hydroinformatics Center (Rafael González); Sistema de Informações Geográficas da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Ribeira e Iguape (Gilberto Cugler); Universidade Federal do Paraná (Prof. Nelson Carlos Rosot).

For more information, follow the link below.

Brazilian Community URL

Geo: International