Chapter 1. Introduction
PostGIS is a spatial extension for the PostgreSQL relational database that was created by Refractions Research Inc, as a spatial database technology research project. Refractions is a GIS and database consulting company in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in data integration and custom software development.
PostGIS is now a project of the OSGeo Foundation and is developed and funded by many FOSS4G developers and organizations all over the world that gain great benefit from its functionality and versatility.
The PostGIS project development group plans on supporting and enhancing PostGIS to better support a range of important GIS functionality in the areas of OGC and SQL/MM spatial standards, advanced topological constructs (coverages, surfaces, networks), data source for desktop user interface tools for viewing and editing GIS data, and web-based access tools.
The PostGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) coordinates the general direction, release cycles, documentation, and outreach efforts for the PostGIS project. In addition the PSC provides general user support, accepts and approves patches from the general PostGIS community and votes on miscellaneous issues involving PostGIS such as developer commit access, new PSC members or significant API changes.
- Raúl Marín Rodríguez
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MVT support, Bug fixing, Performance and stability improvements, GitHub curation, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases
- Regina Obe
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Buildbot Maintenance, Windows production and experimental builds, documentation, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases, X3D support, TIGER geocoder support, management functions.
- Darafei Praliaskouski
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Index improvements, bug fixing and geometry/geography function improvements, SFCGAL, raster, GitHub curation, and bot maintenance.
- Paul Ramsey (Chair)
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Co-founder of PostGIS project. General bug fixing, geography support, geography and geometry index support (2D, 3D, nD index and anything spatial index), underlying geometry internal structures, GEOS functionality integration and alignment with GEOS releases, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases, loader/dumper, and Shapefile GUI loader.
- Sandro Santilli
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Bug fixes and maintenance, buildbot maintenance, git mirror management, management functions, integration of new GEOS functionality and alignment with GEOS releases, topology support, and raster framework and low level API functions.
- Nicklas Avén
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Distance function enhancements (including 3D distance and relationship functions) and additions, Tiny WKB (TWKB) output format and general user support
- Dan Baston
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Geometry clustering function additions, other geometry algorithm enhancements, GEOS enhancements and general user support
- Martin Davis
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GEOS enhancements and documentation
- Björn Harrtell
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MapBox Vector Tile and GeoBuf functions. Gogs testing and GitLab experimentation.
- Aliaksandr Kalenik
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Geometry Processing, PostgreSQL gist, general bug fixing
- Bborie Park
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Prior PSC Member. Raster development, integration with GDAL, raster loader, user support, general bug fixing, testing on various OS (Slackware, Mac, Windows, and more)
- Mark Cave-Ayland
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Prior PSC Member. Coordinated bug fixing and maintenance effort, spatial index selectivity and binding, loader/dumper, and Shapefile GUI Loader, integration of new and new function enhancements.
- Jorge Arévalo
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Raster development, GDAL driver support, loader
- Olivier Courtin
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(Emeritus) Input/output XML (KML,GML)/GeoJSON functions, 3D support and bug fixes.
- Chris Hodgson
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Prior PSC Member. General development, site and buildbot maintenance, OSGeo incubation management
- Mateusz Loskot
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CMake support for PostGIS, built original raster loader in python and low level raster API functions
- Kevin Neufeld
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Prior PSC Member. Documentation and documentation support tools, buildbot maintenance, advanced user support on PostGIS newsgroup, and PostGIS maintenance function enhancements.
- Dave Blasby
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The original developer/Co-founder of PostGIS. Dave wrote the server side objects, index bindings, and many of the server side analytical functions.
- Jeff Lounsbury
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Original development of the Shapefile loader/dumper.
- Mark Leslie
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Ongoing maintenance and development of core functions. Enhanced curve support. Shapefile GUI loader.
- Pierre Racine
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Architect of PostGIS raster implementation. Raster overall architecture, prototyping, programming support
- David Zwarg
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Raster development (mostly map algebra analytic functions)
- Individual Contributors
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Alex Bodnaru Gino Lucrezi Matthias Bay Alex Mayrhofer Greg Troxel Maxime Guillaud Andrea Peri Guillaume Lelarge Maxime van Noppen Andreas Forø Tollefsen Giuseppe Broccolo Maxime Schoemans Andreas Neumann Han Wang Michael Fuhr Andrew Gierth Haribabu Kommi Mike Toews Anne Ghisla Havard Tveite Nathan Wagner Antoine Bajolet IIDA Tetsushi Nathaniel Clay Arthur Lesuisse Ingvild Nystuen Nikita Shulga Artur Zakirov Jackie Leng Norman Vine Barbara Phillipot James Marca Patricia Tozer Ben Jubb Jan Katins Rafal Magda Bernhard Reiter Jason Smith Ralph Mason Björn Esser Jeff Adams Rémi Cura Brian Hamlin Jelte Fennema Richard Greenwood Bruce Rindahl Jim Jones Robert Coup Bruno Wolff III Joe Conway Roger Crew Bryce L. Nordgren Jonne Savolainen Ron Mayer Carl Anderson Jose Carlos Martinez Llari Sebastiaan Couwenberg Charlie Savage Jörg Habenicht Sergei Shoulbakov Christian Schroeder Julien Rouhaud Sergey Fedoseev Christoph Berg Kashif Rasul Shinichi Sugiyama Christoph Moench-Tegeder Klaus Foerster Shoaib Burq Dane Springmeyer Kris Jurka Silvio Grosso Daryl Herzmann Laurenz Albe Stefan Corneliu Petrea Dave Fuhry Lars Roessiger Steffen Macke David Garnier Leo Hsu Stepan Kuzmin David Skea Loïc Bartoletti Stephen Frost David Techer Loic Dachary Steven Ottens Dmitry Vasilyev Luca S. Percich Talha Rizwan Eduin Carrillo Lucas C. Villa Real Teramoto Ikuhiro Esteban Zimanyi Maria Arias de Reyna Tom Glancy Eugene Antimirov Marc Ducobu Tom van Tilburg Even Rouault Mark Sondheim Victor Collod Florian Weimer Markus Schaber Vincent Bre Frank Warmerdam Markus Wanner Vincent Mora George Silva Matt Amos Vincent Picavet Gerald Fenoy Matt Bretl Volf Tomáš - Corporate Sponsors
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These are corporate entities that have contributed developer time, hosting, or direct monetary funding to the PostGIS project. In alphabetical order:
- Aiven
- Arrival 3D
- Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera (GFOSS.it)
- AusVet
- Avencia
- Azavea
- Boundless
- Cadcorp
- Camptocamp
- Carto
- Crunchy Data
- City of Boston (DND)
- City of Helsinki
- Clever Elephant Solutions
- Cooperativa Alveo
- Deimos Space
- Faunalia
- Geographic Data BC
- Hunter Systems Group
- ISciences, LLC
- Kontur
- Lidwala Consulting Engineers
- LISAsoft
- Logical Tracking & Tracing International AG
- Maponics
- Michigan Tech Research Institute
- Natural Resources Canada
- Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institue
- Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO)
- OSGeo
- Oslandia
- Palantir Technologies
- Paragon Corporation
- R3 GIS
- Refractions Research
- Regione Toscana - SITA
- Safe Software
- Sirius Corporation plc
- Stadt Uster
- UC Davis Center for Vectorborne Diseases
- Université Laval
- U.S. Department of State (HIU)
- Zonar Systems
- Crowd Funding Campaigns
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Crowd funding campaigns are campaigns we run to get badly wanted features funded that can service a large number of people. Each campaign is specifically focused on a particular feature or set of features. Each sponsor chips in a small fraction of the needed funding and with enough people/organizations contributing, we have the funds to pay for the work that will help many. If you have an idea for a feature you think many others would be willing to co-fund, please post to the PostGIS newsgroup your thoughts and together we can make it happen.
PostGIS 2.0.0 was the first release we tried this strategy. We used PledgeBank and we got two successful campaigns out of it.
postgistopology - 10 plus sponsors each contributed $250 USD to build toTopoGeometry function and beef up topology support in 2.0.0. It happened.
postgis64windows - 20 someodd sponsors each contributed $100 USD to pay for the work needed to work out PostGIS 64-bit issues on windows. It happened.
- Important Support Libraries
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The GEOS geometry operations library
The GDAL Geospatial Data Abstraction Library used to power much of the raster functionality introduced in PostGIS 2. In kind, improvements needed in GDAL to support PostGIS are contributed back to the GDAL project.
The PROJ cartographic projection library
Last but not least, PostgreSQL , the giant that PostGIS stands on. Much of the speed and flexibility of PostGIS would not be possible without the extensibility, great query planner, GIST index, and plethora of SQL features provided by PostgreSQL.