Autodesk Looking to Release Geodetic Software as Open Source

The program facilitates precise geospatial analysis by providing a simple means of converting geodata. The program is currently integrated with Autodesk's proprietary software products, such as AutoCAD Map3D, and the enterprise product Autodesk MapEnterprise. After Autodesk staff finish pre-release work on the source code and documentation, the software will be released at the end of 2007 under the LGPL in the scope of the OSGeo project. Frank Warmerdam, President of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, praised Autodesk for their contribution to Open Source: "The latest planned contribution supports the projections and transformations necessary to support over 3,000 coordinate systems worldwide and has capabilities not previously available to the open source community."

Lisa Campbell, Vice President of Autodesk Geospatial anticipates faster development processes, shorter release cycles and lower costs from the release. Autodesk purchased the software from Mentor Software recently, and took on founder Norm Olsen as a software developer. Olsen is happy to share the responsibility for his software: "Before this donation, any enhancements to the software were my sole responsibility." Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.