The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to open nominations for the 2024 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software.
The Sol Katz Award for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the FOSS4G community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.
Solomon ‘Sol’ Katz was an early pioneer of FOSS4G and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early FOSS4G archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large.
Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the open source world. Those interested in making a donation to the American Cancer Society, as per Sol’s family’s request, can do so at https://donate.cancer.org .
Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to solkatzaward at lists dot osgeo dot org with a description of the reasons for this nomination (after sending, please wait for the moderator to accept your message). Nominations will be accepted until end-of-day 4th October Anywhere on Earth. A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by the OSGeo selection committee.
The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced virtually during the FOSS4G 2024 event in Belém, Brasil. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.
It should be noted that past awardees and selection committee members are not eligible.
Past Awardees:
- 2023: Howard Butler
- 2022: Sandro Santilli
- 2021: Malena Libman
- 2020: Anita Graser
- 2019: Even Rouault
- 2018: Astrid Emde
- 2017: Andrea Aime
- 2016: Jeff McKenna
- 2015: Maria Brovelli
- 2014: Gary Sherman
- 2013: Arnulf Christl
- 2012: Venkatesh Raghavan
- 2011: Martin Davis
- 2010: Helena Mitasova
- 2009: Daniel Morissette
- 2008: Paul Ramsey
- 2007: Steve Lime
- 2006: Markus Neteler
- 2005: Frank Warmerdam
Selection Committee 2024:
- Jeff McKenna (chair)
- Frank Warmerdam
- Markus Neteler
- Steve Lime
- Paul Ramsey
- Sophia Parafina
- Daniel Morissette
- Helena Mitasova
- Martin Davis
- Venkatesh Raghavan
- Arnulf Christl
- Gary Sherman
- Maria Brovelli
- Andrea Aime
- Astrid Emde
- Even Rouault
- Anita Graser
- Ariel Anthieni
- Sandro Santilli
- Howard Butler