Open is one of those words used everyday with respect to technology. I for one have to take a moment to consider exactly which meaning is in use at any one time. Open in Open GIS Consortium and OpenGIS Specifications highlights the meaning relating to published, accessible interfaces. Open in open source means published in the sense of including source code, but also has a specific meaning relating to licensing and other matters.

In this issue of OGC User, those two uses of open come together, uniting OpenGIS Specifications with open source software. Both implementations, the first supporting data from across Canada, and the second united data sets for the City of Copenhagen, mix commercial software with open source software via open standards.

Canada is big, with millions of acres of forested land. What if you were in charge of making sure your organization could access and report on information from all country organizations that deal with forests and forestry? Information about the sustainable management of the forests, trees available as timber, those that are protected, those that are not healthy… That's not a theoretical task; it's the job of the federal Department of Natural Resources Canada - Canadian Forest Service (CFS).

The City of Copenhagen's online GIS is constantly in flux. Data is updated everyday. New data is coming in. New maps are needed. New people need access. The goal for those managing the system is to provide a technology structure to underlie the different departments' workflows, including making sure data is up-to-date, and maps are delivered with the wanted cartographic setup and relevant functionality when they are needed. Part of the solution for this city of 500,000, which covers 90 square kilometers, and is home to 10% of Denmark's population, involves OpenGIS Specifications.