En muchas ocasiones, hablar de software libre o de código abierto en proyectos públicos se asocia a innovación. Y aunque es cierto que el acceso al conocimiento permite innovar de forma más eficiente en muchos ámbitos, también suele interpretarse como una apuesta por soluciones alternativas o incluso de riesgo.

Si nunca lo fue, hoy todavía menos: esa lectura ya no encaja con la realidad.

Cada vez más, el verdadero riesgo no está en el software libre. Está en la dependencia.

It’s our pleasure to share our first Documentation and Infrastructure Report with highlights ranging across documentation, web infrastructure, and community-facing work. While this blog post provides a brief summary and team introduction, you can find the full report here.

Click on the image above to view Dead Reckoning

This could be a long post because this was an ambitious project that was full of challenges and there are a few learnings, but first a bit of context.

A friend turned me on to the Grateful Dead in 1969, one listen to Live Dead and I was hooked. I still think the transition from Dark Star to St. Stephen is one of the most sublime bits of music ever. When the Dead came to England in 1972 I managed to get to most of their London gigs and made the journey to Bickershaw for the longest performance I have ever seen, I think it ran out at nearly 5 hours!

We are living in a time when almost every territorial project is presented alongside concepts such as artificial intelligence, digital twins or advanced analytics. The message is appealing: prediction, automation, intelligent decision-making.

But there is a less visible and far more decisive reality:
these systems only work properly when data is well structured.

AI applied to territorial management does not just require large volumes of information. It requires data that is coherent, comparable and maintainable over time. This is where standards come into play.

Los mapas en papel son planos, las pantallas en las que vemos Google Maps también lo son. Y nadie duda de su admirable exactitud. En cambio, nos dicen que la tierra es redonda… sospechoso, ¿no? ¡Hemos vivido en una mentira toda la vida! Ellos nos engañan.

¿Pero quiénes son ellos?

Los mapas, naturalmente.

Porque resulta que la Tierra no es plana, pero tampoco es perfectamente redonda, y comprender cómo describimos su forma es el primer paso para entender la cartografía moderna, la navegación o el funcionamiento del GPS.

La Tierra es una realidad única, pero existen distintos modelos para representarla: desde su superficie real, hasta los mapas planos que utilizamos a diario.

Vivimos un momento en el que casi cualquier proyecto territorial se presenta asociado a conceptos como inteligencia artificial, gemelos digitales o analítica avanzada. El mensaje es atractivo: predicción, automatización, toma de decisiones inteligente.

Pero hay una realidad menos visible y mucho más determinante:
estos sistemas solo funcionan bien si los datos están bien estructurados.

La IA aplicada al territorio no necesita únicamente grandes volúmenes de información. Necesita datos coherentes, comparables y mantenibles en el tiempo. Y ahí es donde entran en juego los estándares.

In many countries and regions, public administrations are revising their urban planning and land-use legislation with a shared goal: to simplify procedures, reduce administrative burdens, and adapt territorial management to an increasingly complex and dynamic reality.

The Valencian Community (Spain) is a recent example of this process, with the promotion of a new Land Law based on a widely shared diagnosis: excessively long procedures, documentary overload, duplication of information, and difficulties in coordinating data across departments and administrations. A situation that, to a greater or lesser extent, is repeated in many other territories.

En muchos países y regiones, las administraciones públicas están revisando su legislación urbanística y territorial con un objetivo común: simplificar procedimientos, reducir cargas administrativas y adaptar la gestión del territorio a una realidad cada vez más compleja y dinámica.

La Comunitat Valenciana es un ejemplo reciente de este proceso, con el impulso de una nueva Ley del Suelo que parte de un diagnóstico ampliamente compartido: procedimientos excesivamente largos, sobrecarga documental, duplicidades y dificultades para coordinar información entre departamentos y administraciones. Un escenario que, en mayor o menor medida, se repite en muchos otros territorios.

Ya desde los inicios de la red de autónomos que fue el germen de Geomático, teníamos la costumbre de hacer, todos los años, al menos una reunión presencial de todo el equipo. Para quienes trabajáis en empresas cien por cien en remoto, sabéis lo importante que es juntarse y convivir con otros humanos.

En Geomático, además, al ser una cooperativa, aprovechamos la ocasión para realizar lo que legalmente es nuestra Asamblea Ordinaria. En nuestro caso, utilizamos este evento tanto para la toma de decisiones que requieren el debate de todas las personas socias como para lo que comúnmente llamamos “frikear” un poco.

Durante todo este tiempo, cuando se acercaban estas fechas, elegíamos dónde queríamos vernos y nos poníamos a buscar alojamiento. Hace cuatro años decidimos que nos reuniríamos en Segovia y, durante la búsqueda, dimos con Duermevela.

For years, at gvSIG we have insisted on a concept that was often dismissed as ideological, romantic, or even naïve: technological sovereignty.

Today, in a context marked by geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, and structural dependence on external technologies, this concept has moved beyond academic debate to become a strategic necessity.

Europe imports around 80% of its digital infrastructure and technologies. This is not only an economic issue: it is a political, operational, and democratic vulnerability. We depend on decisions taken outside our legal frameworks, our interests, and, in many cases, our values.

Durante años, en gvSIG hemos insistido en un concepto que muchas veces se despachaba como ideológico, romántico o incluso ingenuo: la soberanía tecnológica.
Hoy, en pleno contexto de tensiones geopolíticas, disrupciones en las cadenas de suministro y dependencia estructural de tecnologías externas, ese concepto ha dejado de ser un debate académico para convertirse en una necesidad estratégica.

Europa importa alrededor del 80 % de su infraestructura y tecnología digital. Esto no es solo una cuestión económica: es una vulnerabilidad política, operativa y democrática. Dependemos de decisiones tomadas fuera de nuestro marco legal, de nuestros intereses y, en muchos casos, de nuestros valores.

We’re genuinely excited to co-organise the upcoming QGIS User Conference together with QGIS User Group Switzerland, and to do so in Laax, right here in the Swiss Alps.

Laax is home to OPENGIS.ch and the place where QField was born. It is a setting that has shaped how we work, how we collaborate, and how we think about building open-source tools that are meant to be used in the real world.

Bringing the global QGIS community together in such a place feels just right. People and ideas come together around open source, with space to exchange, reflect, and collaborate, in an environment that mirrors values that are deeply rooted in our DNA and our close connection to nature.

El nuevo frontend de gvSIG Online da un paso adelante en usabilidad, claridad y experiencia de usuario.

En este breve vídeo te mostramos, de forma rápida y directa, las principales herramientas y elementos de la interfaz: navegación por el geoportal, gestión de capas, herramientas habituales de consulta, edición, marcadores, etc… y una organización del interfaz pensada para trabajar de forma más ágil y eficiente con información geoespacial.

Ver el vídeo:

Una buena oportunidad para conocer, en solo unos minutos, cómo evoluciona gvSIG Online y qué aporta su nuevo frontend al trabajo diario con mapas y datos territoriales. Y esto solo son las herramientas principales…

Should I keep this for April Fool’s Day? Nah, a good laugh is always welcome whenever it comes! Thanks Brilliant Maps for sharing.

“dvdmcc” shared this detail from a hoodie.

Sallie “bumbling about town 🐝🍉” on BlueSky shared this cross-stitch project in progress.

I've made my long range plan for 2026. It's different from my plans from 2023-2025, which were about recovering from injuries and trying to finish a 100 mile race. I succeeded in the former, but not in the latter.

In 2026 I am trying to be more intentional about training for speed. I'm going to do some workouts that develop power and neuromuscular adaptations, without any concern for building aerobic capacity during those workouts. I'm going to do more strides during longer runs and sign up for some shorter 5-10K races. I'm going to remind myself that running briefly, but regularly, at 100 percent can translate to running faster at 80-85 percent during a longer run.

We all enjoy a nice cup of tea with family or friends over Christmas, Walter Schwartz spotted this mappy teapot on his travels.

“This little teapot, short and stout, was in the Two English Ladies Tea Shoppe, a booth at the San Francisco Dickens Fair. It says “Cardew’s London Maps” on the bottom and may have originally been for sale in 1992.  Although it is in the collection of the shop owner, they removed from it display case and let me photograph it because I explained it was for the internationally renowned mappery.org website.”

My guess is that this was made for Multimap, a London based mapping business at the time of the first dotcom boom (late 90’s early 2000’s), as a corporate gift. Maybe one of my friends who worked there will be able to confirm.

In the Christmas market at Covent Garden, London, I spotted this map seller. Unfortunately there was no time to peruse and purchase.

Reinder spotted this plate decorated with a map of Sicily at the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam, the daily flea market.

A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) works like the nervous system of the digital territory. It is not always visible, but it connects data, people, and decisions. When everything works properly, it goes unnoticed. When it does not exist, problems become chronic.

Outdated layers, unresponsive services, duplicated or inconsistent data… the outcome is well known: wasted time, poor coordination between departments, and decisions made with incomplete information— not to mention the public service role that SDIs play in terms of communication and transparency with citizens.

Una Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales (IDE) funciona como el sistema nervioso del territorio digital. No siempre se ve, pero conecta datos, personas y decisiones. Mientras todo funciona, pasa desapercibida. Cuando no existe, los problemas son crónicos.

Capas desactualizadas, servicios que no responden, datos duplicados o incongruentes… El resultado es conocido: más tiempo perdido, menor coordinación entre áreas y decisiones tomadas con información incompleta… por no hablar del servicio público que aportan las IDE en cuanto a comunicación y transparencia con los ciudadanos.

Click on the image above to view the map

Anyone who knows me knows that two of my top passions are maps and football, more specifically The Arsenal. Fans are always debating the historic achievements of their clubs, in some cases going back 40 years or more to find success (name-check = Ken Field), so I thought I would use a map canvas as a backdrop to an interactive dashboard to explore the connections between finances and success.

In the day-to-day management of a city council, information is key. But it is not just about having data—it is about knowing how to organize it, keep it up to date, and turn it into useful knowledge for decision-making. This is where the geographic dimension plays a fundamental role: infrastructures, administrative procedures, public services, environment, urban planning, or heritage… almost everything happens in a specific place within the territory.

The gvSIG Suite provides a comprehensive response to this challenge by combining three tools that cover the entire lifecycle of municipal geographic information: gvSIG Online, gvSIG Mapps, and gvSIG Desktop.

Alex shared this pic, with apologies for the quality. I’m left wondering “What! Why?”

There were five open seats for the 2025 board in this cycle of the Board of Directors election. The Chief Returning Officers reported that 285 out of 468 Charter members cast their votes for the Board of Directors (60% participation). … Continued

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The Open Source Geospatial Foundation is pleased to announce the
results of its Board of Directors elections 2025.

There were five open seats for the 2025 board in this cycle of the
Board of Directors election. The Chief Returning Officers reported
that 285 out of 468 Charter members cast their votes for the Board of
Directors (60% participation). More information on the election
results is available on the dedicated OSGeo wiki page[1].

En la gestión diaria de un ayuntamiento, la información es clave. Pero no solo importa tener datos, sino saber organizarlos, mantenerlos actualizados y convertirlos en conocimiento útil para la toma de decisiones. Y ahí es donde la dimensión geográfica juega un papel fundamental: infraestructuras, expedientes, servicios públicos, medio ambiente, urbanismo o patrimonio… casi todo ocurre en un lugar concreto del territorio.

La Suite gvSIG ofrece una respuesta integral a este reto, combinando tres herramientas que cubren todo el ciclo de vida de la información geográfica municipal: gvSIG Online, gvSIG Mapps y gvSIG Desktop.

For years, in the field of geomatics, we have worked to describe territory with the highest possible level of accuracy. First came traditional GIS, then the Smart Cities narrative, and more recently the consolidation of the digital twin concept. Each of these terms has served a very specific purpose: helping us explain complex projects and highlight the value of geospatial technology in increasingly broad contexts.

The digital twin has represented an important step forward. It has allowed us to talk about models that integrate heterogeneous data, evolve over time, and represent complex territorial systems in an understandable way. However, as these projects mature, a shared feeling begins to emerge: representing reality well is no longer enough.

Another mappy truck, this time spotted by Ken Field somewhere in the US.

With gvSIG Desktop 2.7, we continue moving forward along the path started in previous versions—a path clearly focused on integration with gvSIG Online and on the evolution of gvSIG Desktop as an advanced GIS editor, fully integrated into modern Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) architectures.

In this context, gvSIG Desktop consolidates its role as the desktop tool for editing, analysis, and quality control of geospatial information, naturally complementing gvSIG Online as a platform for data publication, management, and dissemination. This combination is designed to support real-world workflows in public administrations, corporate projects, and collaborative environments.

Click on image above to view the Geomob Events map

Last Friday I recorded a podcast with Ed Freyfogle about my vibe coding exploits. In the podcast Ed challenged me to make a map of Geomob events, so on Sunday afternoon I sat down to see what I could do.

Con la versión gvSIG Desktop 2.7 continuamos avanzando en el camino iniciado en versiones anteriores, un camino claramente orientado a la integración con gvSIG Online y a la evolución de gvSIG Desktop como un editor SIG avanzado, plenamente integrado en arquitecturas IDE modernas.

En este contexto, gvSIG Desktop se consolida como la herramienta de escritorio para la edición, análisis y control de calidad de la información geoespacial, complementando de forma natural a gvSIG Online como plataforma de publicación, gestión y difusión de datos. Una combinación pensada para responder a flujos de trabajo reales en administraciones públicas, proyectos corporativos y entornos colaborativos.

Durante años, en el ámbito de la geomática hemos trabajado para describir el territorio con la mayor precisión posible. Primero fueron los SIG tradicionales, después el discurso de las Smart Cities y, más recientemente, la consolidación del concepto de gemelo digital. Cada uno de estos términos ha cumplido una función muy concreta: ayudarnos a explicar proyectos complejos y a poner en valor la tecnología geoespacial en contextos cada vez más amplios.

Rollo spotted this jigsaw of John Speeds county maps in a charity shop. For reasons that I can’t understand he didn’t buy it.

Reinder spotted this in the in the public library in The Hague ” on the floor there is a map – not surprisingly – of the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. Been here many times, but never saw this before. “

Hello, my name is Sean Gillies, and this is my blog. I write about running, cooking and eating, gardening, travel, family, programming, Python, API design, geography, geographic data formats and protocols, open source, and internet standards. Mostly running and local geography. Fort Collins, Colorado, is my home. I work at TileDB, which sells a multimodal data platform for genomics and precision medicine. I appreciate emailed comments on my posts. You can find my address in the "about" page linked at the top of this page. Happy New Year!

Snow-covered cones, craters, and lava flows of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, viewed from an airliner traveling between Denver and Seattle on February 21, 2025.

Melinda Clarke, the creator of the Melbourne Map has branched out with a range of beautiful silk scarves with some very stylish map designs including, of course, The Melbourne Map. n this pic my pal Denise McKenzie is wearing Melbourne at the GeoBusiness conference.

Here’s Melinda with her vintage New York scarf

And here she is with the Melbourne map

You can order the scarves from her site at https://www.themelbournemap.com.au/collections/scarves, a beautiful gift for a map lover.

Finally it’s here: Jupyter notebooks inside QGIS. I don’t know about you but I’ve been hoping for someone to get around to doing this for quite a while.

Qiusheng Wu published the first version of the Notebook plugin on 26 Dec 2025. Late Christmas present?!

For the setup, there’s a handy tutorial by Hans van der Kwast and, additionally, Qiusheng published an intro video:

Development is going fast (version 0.3.0 at the time of writing) so there will be new features when you install / update the plugin compared to both the tutorial and the video.

Click on image above to view the map

Do the levels of deaths from mass shootings in the US correlate with the gun policies of individual states? I thought this might be an interesting topic to explore in my journey of mapping with AI, you can draw a conclusion from the screenshot above or wait until you get to the end of this post for my thoughts. Mapping wise – I also wanted to explore building a fairly complex map with a detailed prompt to see how close I could get in one go.

This is not the opening screen of some Esri software, it’s the in-flight mapping system on Ken’s last flight to the UK

I started out trying to make web maps with WebMapperGPT and then Google Gemini to scratch an itch after my pal Ken Field said he was going to make a map a day in 2026. I thought I would give it a try and as some of the previous posts in this thread have shown I have been able to make some reasonable web maps with quite nice design and interaction (IMHO). But it isn’t easy and it’s certainly not a miracle coding solution.

My coding expertise is non existent – I do not know anything about JavaScript, I can edit but not create html pages and CSS with guidance and I have used mark-down a few times. My cartographic skills are quite limited and are a combination of self taught (not good) and correction by ridicule (Ken Field), I can use QGIS but am only a basic level user. Bottom line I couldn’t build one of the maps that I have built without assistance from AI.

Nyall Dawson has been working on FOSS4G projects since 2013, having contributed to numerous projects such as QGIS, GDAL, and PROJ. He is best known as a key, longstanding core contributor to QGIS, with over 24000 commits (and growing).  Nyall …...

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We are honoured to announce that Nyall[1] is the recipient of the 2025
Sol Katz Award (the 21st year of the award) at the recent FOSS4G event
in Auckland, New Zealand.

Nyall Dawson has been working on FOSS4G projects since 2013, having
contributed to numerous projects such as QGIS, GDAL, and PROJ.

Marc Tobias spotted this old school map in Ed Frefogles home. It’s pretty nig!

En entornos donde cada segundo cuenta, la capacidad de gestionar, visualizar y analizar información geográfica de forma precisa es un factor determinante para el éxito operativo. Desde la Suite gvSIG, estamos impulsando una solución integral diseñada para modernizar las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (IDE) y optimizar los procesos de respuesta ante emergencias y asistencia ciudadana.

Nuestra propuesta tecnológica se basa en la integración de tres pilares fundamentales que cubren todo el ciclo de vida del dato espacial:

“World of communication’, in Rome, in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. It dates from 1972 and is made by Jiří Kolář. ” I htink the collage on the globe is made with postage stamps.

We are happy to announce that the QGIS User Conference 2026 will take place on 5–6 October 2026 in Laax, in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Visit the conference website to find out all details.

The conference will be hosted at Crap Sogn Gion, at 2,222 metres above sea level, offering a unique setting with panoramic mountain views and direct access to the surrounding alpine landscape. Despite its mountain location, Laax is well connected by public transport and provides a wide range of accommodation options in the valley.

As Chair of the QGIS Project and of the QGIS User Conference 2026, I’m very much looking forward to welcoming the community in my hometown and place of birth of QField.

Reinder spotted these mappy suitcases in a hotel window in Rome. He was so taken with them that he didn’t mention the nice looking globe, while his wife apparently was more impressed by the towels folded as swans. Go figure!

If only those cases were a bit bigger and had wheels.

La red GeoLIBERO ha sido reconocida oficialmente como Red Emérita por el Programa CYTED. Este reconocimiento fue aprobado por la Asamblea General celebrada en noviembre de 2025 en Asunción (Paraguay) y supone, sobre todo, un respaldo al trabajo colectivo que venimos desarrollando desde hace años en torno a la geomática libre en Iberoamérica.

Además, he sido nombrado coordinador de la Red Emérita GeoLIBERO para el periodo 2026–2029, una responsabilidad que desde la Asociación gvSIG asumimos con orgullo y con muchas ganas de seguir impulsando esta comunidad.

Throughout the week, in workshops, presentations, and project showcases, a consistent theme emerged: QField is not just “the mobile companion to QGIS,” it is production infrastructure for complete field-to-cloud-to-desktop workflows.

It was incredible to see how present QField was throughout FOSS4G 2025 in Auckland. With around 20 presentations and workshops featuring QField, the conference showcased a wide range of real-world, production-grade use cases across many sectors. 

What stood out was not just the number of talks, but how consistently QField was presented as a trusted, operational tool rather than an experiment.

Reinder spotted this mosaic map of the Old City of Rome, “Saw this in the lobby of the Santa Chiara hotel in Rome. The size of the map is let’s say 50 x 70 cm, it is made of little stones of approximately 4 x 4 mm. No artist is mentioned — but he or she deserves our respect. Ciao!”

Click the image to go the Unequal London Map (v2)

I was quite pleased with the first version of the Unequal London Map, but by the time I had crawled over the finish line I realised that there were several choices that I had made which were less than ideal, particularly with regard to the data I selected. I thought it should be quite easy to build another version with more/different data and remedy some of the other issues. I decided to start with Gemini to avoid the usage limits with WebMapperGPT.

The first stage was to identify the data that I could use to give a better view of inequality in London. I started with this prompt:

Remember Santa’s Delivery Route from Xmas Eve? Ken sent me this modern version of that map which he spotted in the lobby of the Great Northern Hotel next to Kings Cross. Note that this time the map is north up.