Atlas City Project

Hello all,
I am an usa citizen who recently moved to New Zealand. I came across your project after searching for open source/free software and the Venus Project. Sadly, the new software development team for the Venus Project is choosing to require their volunteer developers to sign NDAs and possibly develop proprietary software, hence my reason for the google search and finding this group.

Anyways, I commend everyone here working towords a better tomorrow! Is there a timeline or project planning? I saw that you have a source forge project but it seems to be unloved. I think source forge is a great free project planning, bug reporting, and project management software. I use sourceforge for many of my free software project; although, at work we use Jira and confluence (which is pretty awesome).

So what am I doing here in New Zealand? I work at Landcare Research. Our vision is, "At Landcare Research we are passionate about the role of science in fostering a higher quality of life for New Zealanders, while also ensuring our natural environment is protected and respected." I work in the GIS group as a scientific programmer and systems administrator. I am part of a team that is developing a highly scalable, multi-level, data store that holds GIS data. The focus is to initially store all of NZ's soil data but the data store's design enables multilayers of other data such as weather, ocean, animals, and etc. The software is currently proprietary until we get a working version and are planning to release as open source.

So far my family loves living in NZ. We don't have nearly as much stress as in the USA. Health care is free here (we are residents) and life just seems simpler. Well, I wish everyone good luck back in the states!

Hello,

When TVP and ZM were still the same thing, the original software development group grew dissatisfied with the closed proprietary direction that things were going, split off and formed RBOSE. Last we heard of them, they were not interested in joining up in any cooperative effort with the other organizations, preferring a more Anonymous-like approach. Our own collaborative effort contains some developers (primarily webdev), but also many people in other areas.

Were you looking for cooperation? If yes, what kinds of projects did you have in mind?

I am a sysadmin myself.

LP,
Jure

Hi there,

I am glad you found us! Atlas does not yet have a specific timeline but we do have some of the timeline structure up and moving. We are working on funding at the moment and plan to have a working research facility up in the near future. The facility will allow us to develop and advance the technology needed to build the infrastructure that will be needed in the city. We understand that too often groups that build green environments end up going backward in technology, so we are aiming to move forward in technology and living in a sustainable way in relation to our environment. Science is most definitely the answer to our future.

Atlas is also part of the Technate Consortium (a global collaborative effort with other groups) and we are attempting to keep things 'open source' in the way that it should be, belonging to all humankind.

We have the Source Forge page because we had people working on some projects for Atlas but there was a falling out and they decided to break away from the group and go their own way. Last I knew they had themselves broken up and are no longer do anything. But the core of our group has remained strong and dedicated to the project.

Thanks for posting and I hope that you join us in moving this project forward.

Also check out the other groups involved with the Technate.

Rob

Hi Dustwolf,
I was just posting to say hello and introduce myself. If there is opportunity for collaboration, I would possibly be interested.

Hi Jinx,
Thanks for providing the history of the software development group for Atlas City. I was unaware that the sourceforge project wasn't linked to this project any longer.

Thanks

Just wanted to clarify, the Source forge page is still linked to us but has not been worked on because the people who were doing it left. We are looking for new people to take up that position and push forward with it.

I am impressed with your firm Landcare Research, this is something we are very interested in and in fact, we have applied for grants to manage agricultural pests. New Zealand sounds great. Please stay in touch.