The development, integration, and distribution of the information and spatial data infrastructure necessary to support the vision and goals of a digital Earth will occur in a distributed fashion, in very diverse technological, institutional, socio-cultural, and economic contexts around the world. Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications (FOSS4G) offers mature, capable and reliable software to contribute to the creation of this infrastructure. A recent paper presents a selected set of some of the most mature and reliable FOSS4G solutions that can be used to develop the functionality for a digital earth. It includes examples of large-scale, sophisticated, mission-critical applications of each software to illustrate their potential in support of a digital Earth. Information and resources are offered to help users select the best FOSS4G solutions for their particular contexts and system development needs.
Geoff - the FOSS4G process you note is well on its way. Google has just concluded its first NEXT meeting that deals with Google's offerings for CLOUD advantages. What is very exciting for digital Earth is that the essential magical workings of Google Earth aka Keyhole is going open source. That plus a number of other "open" offerings via Google's emerging open offering for massive data and machine learning will accelerate this widest distribution of information.
Posted by: Neil Havermale | March 11, 2017 at 09:24 AM