Howard Butler hobu

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Chris Toney, Michael Smith, Even Rouault, Norman Barker, and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 04/23/2026. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

Releases

Maintenance release GDAL 3.12.4 was released https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/releases/tag/v3.12.4 See https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/v3.12.4/NEWS.md for bug list and details
GDAL 3.13.0b2 is now available. Preliminary release notes are available at https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/304c53e1298e3294c8b854a996103ad1ca8a131d/NEWS.md

Conferences

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Chris Toney, Seth Girvin, Even Rouault, and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 03/26/2026. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

AI/LLM

New AI/LLM policy is now active. See https://gdal.org/en/stable/community/ai_tool_policy.html#ai-tool-policy for details
Howard gave a short interview with NumFOCUS about the GDAL Sponsorship Program that includes a bit about AI and the impact on open source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFzNCoQaBfo

Releases

Maintenance release GDAL 3.12.3 was released https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/releases/tag/v3.12.3 See https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/v3.12.3/NEWS.md for bug list and details

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Michael Smith, Chris Toney, Seth Girvin, Michael Sumner, Even Rouault, Javier Jimenez Shaw, and special guest Galen Scott from NOAA held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 01/22/2026. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

Thanks to Dan Baston's efforts, results and analysis from the 2025 GDAL User Survey are now available.
Support GDAL with a new t-shirt! Visit https://gdal.org/tshirt/ to purchase. Change your country preference on the bottom of the page. Profits from swag sales go directly to the GDAL Sponsorship Program via NumFOCUS!

Special Guest Discussion

Galen Scott from NOAA joined the call to discuss happenings in NOAAs

The December GDAL Maintainers Meeting was canceled due to landing on a holiday and reports have been compiled for this month's Minutes.

Project News

GeoCzech has renewed as a Bronze sponsor for 2026. Thanks again GeoCzech for your continued support of the GDAL Sponsorship Program!
The 2025 GDAL User Survey is still active for a few days! Visit https://gdal.org/survey/ and tell the project how you use it, where you get help, what it should do in the future, and how/if it should use LLMs going forward. If you (optionally) give us your email, we'll even enter you to win a GDAL t-shirt!
Support GDAL with a new t-shirt! Visit https://gdal.org/tshirt/ to purchase. Change your country preference on the bottom of the page. Profits from swag sales go directly to the GDAL Sponsorship Program via NumFOCUS!

Maintenance activities update

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Michael Sumner, Even Rouault, and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 11/27/2025. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

Planet has renewed as a Gold sponsor for 2026. Thanks again Planet for your continued support of the GDAL Sponsorship Program!
The 2025 GDAL User Survey is now active for the month of December! Visit https://gdal.org/survey/ and tell the project how you use it, where you get help, what it should do in the future, and how/if it should use LLMs going forward. If you (optionally) give us your email, we'll even enter you to win a GDAL t-shirt!
Support GDAL with a new t-shirt! Visit https://gdal.org/tshirt/ to purchase. Change your country preference on the bottom of the page. Profits from swag sales go directly to the GDAL Sponsorship Program via NumFOCUS!
RHEL 10.1 now includes GDAL packages with a limited set of drivers

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Michael Sumner, Even Rouault, Mike Smith, Chris Toney, and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 10/23/2025. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

A new GDAL tshirt is now available! Visit https://numfocus.myspreadshop.com/gdal+t+shirt-A68deb7db164d8905c4c1035f?productType=1130&sellable=9OeE7gVexMimlaxo9RDB-1130-7&appearance=743 and then make sure to navigate to the bottom of the page and change your country appropriately. Profits from sales go directly to the GDAL Sponsorship Program via NumFOCUS! Design and inspiration comes from Lindsey Nield observing that "Every new geospatial tool is just GDAL in a trench coat" https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7384648716357574656
If you like LinkedIn-flavored social media, GDAL now has an organization page https://www.linkedin.com/company/gdalorg/

Maintenance activities update

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Michael Sumner, Even Rouault, Mike Smith, Chris Toney, and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 09/25/2025. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

NASA is renewing its Gold GDAL sponsorship for 2025. Thanks again NASA!
Safe Software is renewing its Silver GDAL sponsorship for 2025. Thanks again Safe!
LINZ is renewing its Bronze GDAL sponsorship for 2025. Thanks again LINZ!
Howard is working to get a new GDAL tshirt design available through the NumFOCUS Spreadshirt shop. Look for an announcement in the next month or so.

Howard Butler, Dan Baston, Alessandro Pasotti, Michael Sumner, Even Rouault, Mike Smith, Norman Barker, Chris Toney, Daniel Morissette and Javier Jimenez Shaw held the monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 08/28/2025. The following items were discussed and reported upon:

Project News

Maxar is renewing its Bronze GDAL sponsorship for 2025. Thanks Maxar!
Google is renewing its Silver GDAL sponsorship for 2025. Thanks Google!
Many GDAL team members including Even, Dan, Mike Smith, Seth, Jukka, and Javier will be at the OSGeo Community Sprint in Riga Sept 29-Oct 3. See https://www.osgeo.org/events/join-osgeo-community-sprint-2025-at-bids-25-riga-latvia/ for more details.

Maintenance activities update

The monthly GDAL Maintainers Meeting on 07/24/2025 was canceled due to holiday season. The following items were reported via email:

Project News

2025 GDAL Sponsorship Program fundraising continues to be frustrating. If you are following a large cloud's tutorial about how to use VSI to access their object store, you might ask your sales rep about why they no longer see strategic benefit to financially supporting GDAL and its core dependencies like PROJ, GEOS, Sphinx, and more which make such an approach conveniently possible.

	import argparse
	import sys
	import struct
	import codecs
	import json

	import logging
	import sys

	logger = logging.getLogger("rpfddes")