MapServer History

This page will act as a sandbox for compiling notes on the history of MapServer, for publishing to the main MapServer website, as well as Wikipedia.

The project was born of necessity and frustration with commercial Web-based mapping offerings available in the mid-1990s. The initial interest was in developing spatially-enabled Web applications and not the software to make that possible.

TODO

• when was GDAL initially implemented by/for who (CFS / GeoConnections?)?
• when was PostGIS initially implemented by Refractions? For who?
• when was OracleSpatial support developed by Rodrigo Cabral of CTTMAR/UNIVALI, Brazil? For who?

1994

• initial effort to develop decision support system for recreational users of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northern Minnesota, USA
  • initially basic configuration to submit web requests to AML routines, rendered with ArcPlot
  • 30 seconds to render maps
  • licensing limitations
• UMN awarded with NASA/ForNet funding to support web-based delivery of forestry data
  • partnership between Minnesota DNR and UMN
  • 2 output CGI processes
    • classified imagery output ("imgserv"); CGI process
    • context data output ("mapserv")
  • integration with Java applets
• initially UNIX/Linux based

1995

• Shapelib released

1996

• user community of 10
• a few external organizations using MapServer
• 2.0 released as final project deliverable

1997

• most development moved to Minnesota DNR
• basic raster support added
• support for Truetype fonts (Freetype)
• GD used for image generation

1998

• UMN funded by NASA for TerraSIP to deliver land use/land cover data over the Web
• focused on using multispectral and hyperspectral data
  • functionality eventually provided by GDAL

1999

• UMN makes MapServer open source
• 3.0 released
• 3.3 released

2000

• 3.3 released with MapScript
• DM Solutions Group adopts MapServer and starts contributing to the project
• PHP MapScript developed
• Windows support developed
• Initial implementation of OGR support
• 3.4 released

2001

• Initial implementation of OGC WMS Server Support with funding from NRCan's Canadian Forestry Service (CFS)

2002

• MapServer used as underlying framework for CGDI WMS Client Component (CWC2), later renamed to Chameleon
• 3.5 released

2003

• 3.6 released
• 4.0 released
• initial ​MapServer for Windows release
• (June) first MapServer Users Meeting, at the University of Minnesota

2004

• 4.2 released
• 4.4 released
  • WCS support
  • FastCGI support
  • i18 encoding

2005

• (July) Creation of the ​MapServer Technical Steering Committee (TSC)
• 4.6 released
  • GEOS support

2006

• initial support for Sensor Observation Service (SOS) to support monitoring stations and data, for Environment Canada
• 4.8 released
  • layer plug-in architecture

2007

• (April) The TSC becomes the ​MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC)
• 5.0 released
  • support for AGG for improved graphics rendering

2008

• 5.2 released
  • Tile-based output (a la Google Maps)
  • Simplified templating
  • Native Microsoft SQL Server 2008 support