GeoServer

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GeoServer is an open source Web Feature Server 1.0 and Web Map Server 1.1.1 reference implementation. It was started by a non-profit organization called The Open Planning Project (TOPP), to help build an interoperable Spatial Data Infrastructure by providing high quality, easy to use, open source software to potential data providers.

GeoServer allows the publishing of geospatial data as maps/images (using the Web Map Server), as actual data (using the Web Feature Server), and allows users to update, delete, and insert features (using the Web Feature Server-Transactional). The focus of the software is ease of use and support for open standards, in order to enable anyone to quickly share their geospatial information in an interoperable way.

MapServer is a comparable open source product, having much of the same feature set. One distinction between the two is that Mapserver has a somewhat older development environment, written in C and invoked via CGI, whereas Geoserver is written in Java.