Two QGIS related GSOC 2009 projects have been approved:

1. Label placement for Quantum GIS - Martin Dobias
2. OssimPlanet integration in Grass and Qgis - Massimo Di Stefano

Congratulations to Martin and Massimo. Other projects approved under the OSGeo umbrella can be found on the GSOC website at:

My previous post appears to have caused confusion for some. Be assured that the post was an April Fools joke.

QGIS is Free and Open Source Software and will remain so. There have been no changes to the project management, license, or philosophy. The development team is hard at work and preparing for a new release in the near future.

Due to long-standing issues and the inability to control and manage the source code, QGIS is going closed source effective today, 2009-04-01. The software is no longer licensed as free software but rather is to be managed by a consortium made up of several key developers.

http://spatialgalaxy.net/2008/09/19/qgistomapserver-a-conversion-tool

QGIS is participating in the Google Summer of Code under the OSGeo umbrella.

For information on the program, see: http://code.google.com/soc/2008

We are looking for students interested in participating in the program this summer. For QGIS project ideas, see: http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/SummerOfCodeIdeas

Note the student application period runs from March 24th - 31st so time is short. If you are interested please apply. If you have questions regarding potential QGIS projects, feel free to contact me directly [shermange at gmail dot com].

QGIS is now a full fledged OSGeo project. A bit more information can be found on the OSGeo website.

Paolo Cavallini has been named to the QGIS Project Steering Committee and will assume the role of Financial/Marketing Advisor.

Paolo comes from a strong scientific background in zoology (a PhD, and more than 30 publication in international journals, plus conference proceedings and popular papers). Paolo currently heads a small and active group of professionals (biologists and agronomists) under the name Faunalia.

Nominations are now open for the QGIS Project Steering Committee. Nominations are being solicited for the Financial/Marketing Advisor position.

Please read http://wiki.qgis.org/qgiswiki/Call_for_Nominations_January_2008
for information on the position and how to nominate someone.

This is primarily a bug fix release and includes the following key changes:

• 70 Bugs closed
• Added locale tab to options dialog so that locale can be overridden
• Cleanups and additions to GRASS tools
• Python Plugin Installer for installing plugins from the PyQGIS repository
• Documentation updates
• Improvements for building under MSVC

Packages for a number of platforms are available at download.qgis.org

Many thanks to all those who have contributed in testing, reporting

From the QGIS Development Team:

It is our great pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Quantum GIS (QGIS) Version 0.9.0. See below for press release:

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License.