IGN France has become the latest OSGeo Associate Sponsor! The Institut Géographique National (IGN) is an administrative public institution under the authority of France’s Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development. They have a decades-long expertise especially in cartography, aerial imagery and geographic databases.
Their interest in open source comes first from improving tools such as Proj.4 and OSGeo-supported GDAL/OGR, in order to be able to reproject geographic data from the old French geodesic system (NTF) to the new one (RGF93). Hopefully these improved tools will help make the transition easier for the public.
Second, they have also been using OSGeo-supported OpenLayers as a foundation for Geoportail's new API. Given OpenLayers's widespread use, programmers should find it easy to use Geoportail's API.
IGN France looks forward to being involved in supporting OSGeo through the funding but also by continuing contributing code to the aforementioned projects.
You can learn more about IGN France at: http://www.ign.fr/