which to focus and coordinate their efforts. A number of the lead members from each team working with JUMP formed the JPP Development Committee, whose purpose was to guide and oversee this new unified platform. A name was chosen for this open source GIS program to be based on JUMP, "OpenJUMP". In particular during the second half of the 2010ths the original JUMP Platform as well as OpenJUMP GIS were used as a platform in research to develop new GIS algorithms and workflows, for instance at IGN France and the University of Zurich in automated cartography, and at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences for then novel precision farming tools. OpenJUMP has also been in use for teaching GIS at a range of universities, leading to its inclusion at the OSGeo Live DVD Project along with many other mayor and minor free GIS software projects, despite not being an OSGeo project itself. File formats One important feature of Jump and OpenJUMP is the ability to work with GIS data in GML format. GML or "Geography Markup Language" is an XML (text-based) format for GIS data. It is a way to describe spatial information in a human readable form, and is an accepted "open standard" for GIS data. OpenJUMP can currently read and write GML data, and the team hopes to develop a number of utilities that will improve OpenJUMP's ability to work with GML. The ability to work with an open format like GML is important to implementers because it gives alternatives to proprietary formats like Autodesk DWG files or ESRI Shapefiles. OpenJUMP nevertheless also reads and writes ESRI Shapefiles and supports ESRI ASCII grid format with an OpenJump plugin from the SIGLE team. While OpenJUMP is considered primarily a vector based GIS, it also supports rasters, as TIF files or the above ESRI ASCII grid. See also Kosmo, JUMP based project from a Spain-based company External links OpenJUMP web site OpenJUMP Wiki and community website Vivid Solutions - The company that created the original version of JUMP JUMP Pilot Project - English info website of the support project JUMP-Pilot References Project Website Free GIS software Free software programmed in Java (programming language)