Project: QGIS

Changelog for version: 2.8.0

This is the change log for the next release of QGIS - version 2.8.0 ' Wien'. Wien is German for 'Vienna' - host city to our developer meet up in November 2009 and again in March 2014.

Long Term Release

This is a special release since it is designated an 'LTR' (Long Term Release). LTR releases will be supported with backported bug fixes for one year, and will be in permanent feature freeze (i.e. no new features will be added, only bug fixes and trivial updates).

The purpose of LTR releases is to provide a stable and less frequently changing platform for enterprises and organisations that do not want to deal with updating user skills, training materials etc. more than once per year. The success of the LTR is very much down to you, our beloved users - we need your support to help funding bug fixes and making sure in your support contracts with support providers specify that any bug fixes done on your behalf are applied to the LTR branch as well as our normal development branch.

If an LTR is important to you, please consider also directly supporting the QGIS project, or encourage your commercial provider to use LTR as a basis for your enterprise solution so that everyone may benefit from a stable platform that is being continuously improved and refined. Note that for users and organisations that like to live on the frontier, our regular four monthly feature preview releases will continue unabated.

New Features

QGIS 2.8.0 is also a special release because it includes so many great new features, tweaks and enhancements to make the most popular Free desktop GIS even more feature filled and useful.

Whenever new features are added to software they introduce the possibility of new bugs - if you encounter any problems with this release, please file a ticket on the QGIS Bug Tracker.

Thanks

We would like to thank the developers, documenters, testers and all the many folks out there who volunteer their time and effort (or fund people to do so).

From the QGIS community we hope you enjoy this release! If you wish to donate time, money or otherwise get involved in making QGIS more awesome, please wander along to qgis.org and lend a hand!

Finally we would like to thank our official sponsors for the invaluable financial support they provide to this project:

• GOLD Sponsor: Asia Air Survey, Japan
• SILVER Sponsor: Sourcepole AG, Switzerland
• SILVER Sponsor: State of Vorarlberg, Austria
• SILVER Sponsor: Office of Public Works, Ireland, Ireland
• BRONZE Sponsor: www.molitec.it, Italy
• BRONZE Sponsor: www.argusoft.de, Germany
• BRONZE Sponsor: www.openrunner.com, France
• BRONZE Sponsor: GKG Kassel,(Dr.-Ing. Claas Leiner), Germany
• BRONZE Sponsor: Customer Analytics, USA
• BRONZE Sponsor: Urbsol, Australia
• BRONZE Sponsor: MappingGIS, Spain
• BRONZE Sponsor: Lutra Consulting, UK
• BRONZE Sponsor: ADLARES GmbH, Germany
• BRONZE Sponsor: Avioportolano Italia, Italy
• BRONZE Sponsor: Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection, AGH, ​University of Science and Technology, Poland

A current list of donors who have made financial contributions large and small to the project can be seen on our donors list. If you would like to become and official project sponsor, please visit our sponsorship page for details. Sponsoring QGIS helps us to fund our six monthly developer meetings, maintain project infrastructure
and fund bug fixing efforts.

QGIS is Free software and you are under no obligation to pay anything to use it - in fact we want to encourage people far and wide to use it regardless of what your financial or social status is - we believe empowering people with spatial decision making tools will result in a better society for all of humanity.