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.

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 configuaration 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 exteral 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 investigates possibility of contribution with UMN
• PHP MapScript developed
• Windows support developed
• 3.4 released

2001

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

2004

2005

2006

• initial support for Sensor Observation Service (SOS) to support monitoring stations and data

2007

2008

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