Between the Poles

Venkatesh Raghavan awarded Sol Katz award for his contributions to the Geospatial Free and Open Source community

Every year the OSGEO awards the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software to people who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community and contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.  Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and among many other things assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System), arguably the first open source GIS software in the world.  Previous recipients of the Sol Katz award are  2011: Martin Davis, Helena Mitasova, Daniel Morissette, Paul Ramsey, Steve Lime, Markus Neteler, and Frank Warmerdam.

Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan of Osaka City Univiersity was awarded the 2012 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software during the first session of the FOSS4G-India 2012 conference in Hyderabad, India.  Venka has been involved in OSGeo since the foundation was formed in 2006.  I remember his very early involvement in organizing the first open source geospatial symposium,  at an early Map World Forum in Hyderabad if I remember. His committment to open source geospatial and his community work, particularly in Japan and India, promoting open source geospatial is well-known to everyone in the GFOSS community.

Geospatial World Forum: Creating a land registry system in Rwanda in less than five years

At the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam today Didier Sagashya, Deputy Director General of Lands and Mapping Department in the government of Rwanda gave a fascinating presentation about creating a land adminstration system in Rwanda.

The Organic Law of 2005 defined a new land tenure system based on security of tenure and that land administration is mandatory. There are an estimated 10 million parcels in Rwanda which has one of the highest national population densities in the world, about 400 people per km². 

Starting in 2009 Rwanda set out to create a land registry.  One of the  most interesting aspects of the Rwandan approach is that it is not based on a traditionally-surveyed cadastre.  Instead it relies on nation-wide high resolution (25 cm) photo imagery and a process that involves consulting with local people and drawing boundaries on the high resolution imagery.  At this point about 2.7 million parcels have been defined and adjudicated and land registry titles printed.  It is expected that registration of all of the 10 million parcels will be completed by 2013, which is a remarkable achievement, especially in less than five years.

The major benefit of a national land registry system is that it enables land to participate in the national economy.  For example, land can be used as collateral in applying for bank loans.  One of the interesting statistics that Didier mentioned was that last year the number of bank loan applications involving land as a collateral was about 10,000 for the entire year.  In the first quarter of 1012, the number of bank loan applications is already 6000, which suggest people are already beginning to take advantage of the new land registry system.

The other major impact that Didier mentioned that a national land registry system can have is that it can lead to sustainable land management, less erosion, for example, because presumeably if you own something you take better care of it.  This effect tends to be long-term, and Didier did not have statistics to show that this is happening, but this is one of the outcomes they are monitoring, in addition to bank loans.

Novell Owns Unix

After a court case starting in 2004 between SCO and Novell, a jury in Utah decided that Novell owns the rights to the Unix operating system. 

This should help resolve the open court case between SCO and IBM over Linux, in the context of which Linus Torvalds is quoted as saying "There really is a reason why nobody believes a word SCO is saying, and it's because SCO is lying."

New Autodesk Community Blog

Ray Eisenberg is starting a new blog today called the Voice of Community blog.  The blog is for all those interested in community. If you want to locate an online Autodesk community or face-to-face user group that is right for you; if you're looking for community guidelines and best practices; if you want pointers to the latest in community thinking, this is a good blog to follow. 

I've known Ray for quite a few years.  Ray is originally from Manchester, England and now lives in Oakland, California.  He's not only passionate about all matters community and all things soccer, but also all things Zinfandel.