The Open Planning Project (TOPP), the main sponsor of GeoServer development, has just hired Tim Schaub, an active member of the OpenLayers Project Steering Committee. He will start work July 23. GeoServer has always been focused on standards on the server side, and its been great to see OpenLayers emerge as an extremely capable front end for open geospatial standards. With 1.5.1 GeoServer started shipping with OpenLayers as the default for previewing map, and also added OpenLayers as an output format for the WMS.

Hiring Tim represents a continued commitment to supporting OpenLayers development, and Tim will focus on expanding the capabilities of OpenLayers to be part of a powerful integrated online geospatial package with GeoServer. His initial work will focus on a client implementation of our Versioning WFS improvements. The other two major technical goals will be support for OWS Context Documents and a GUI driven SLD editor, so that people can easily remix and customize maps for their own needs. He will also focus on building up breadth of client services that TOPP offers, so as to offer a complete support package. We are excited to strengthen the links between the GeoServer and OpenLayers communities, and believe there’s a very bright future for both.