Doc: add a thanks page

doc/source/index.rst

@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ GDAL
     contributing/index
     faq
     license
+    thanks
 
 Index
 =====

doc/source/thanks.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,204 @@
+.. _thanks:
+
+================================================================================
+Thanks
+================================================================================
+
+As of 2024, GDAL has now a 26 year-long existence, and many individuals, companies,
+without forgetting its :ref:`sponsors`, have contributed to its development and success.
+While it is always difficult to properly acknowledge all contributions, a few
+individuals particularly stand out:
+
+- `Frank Warmerdam <https://github.com/warmerdam>`__, creator of GDAL, initial chair of its Project Steering Committee
+  (PSC) and maintainer from 1998 to 2012, founding member of OSGeo, and currently
+  Principal Engineer at Planet.
+  GDAL would not be what is is without his outstanding work. Support for GeoTIFF,
+  JPEG, PNG, VRT, Shapefile, CSV, PostGIS and dozens of other popular (or niche)
+  formats, as well as gdal_translate, gdalwarp, ogr2ogr and most other utilities
+  are all to be credited to Frank.
+
+- `Howard Butler <https://github.com/hobu>`__, director of Hobu Inc., active on GDAL since 2004, contributor to
+  the Python SWIG bindings, PSC member, founding member of OSGeo.
+  Howard was the coordinator of the fundraising that lead to the advent of
+  GDAL 3 and PROJ 6, and since 2021, he has been instrumental in setting up the
+  GDAL Sponsorship Program and serves as its head, liaising with our sponsors
+  and NumFOCUS, and animating GDAL contributor monthly meetings.
+
+- `Jukka Rahkonen <https://github.com/jratike80>`__, Chief IT Specialist at the National Land Survey of Finland,
+  power-user and long-time passionate of GDAL, PSC member.
+  Over the last 15 years, Jukka has been tirelessly helping users and triaging
+  reports on the issue tracker or other support forums.
+
+- `Even Rouault <https://github.com/rouault>`__, involved since 2007, main maintainer since 2014, current PSC chair,
+  director of Spatialys.
+  Even has authored dozens of drivers (and happy to have managed to retire
+  a few of them!) and many enhancements. He has also been involved in code
+  modernization, extension of the regression test suite, continuous integration
+  and security efforts.
+
+Among `code contributors <https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/graphs/contributors>`__,
+we want to acknowledge the key, past or current, documentation or code contributions
+of the following persons:
+
+- `Ben Ahmed Daho Ali <https://github.com/allilou>`__: SXF driver
+- `Jorge Arevalo <https://github.com/jorgeas80>`__: PostGIS Raster driver
+- `Dan Baston <https://github.com/dbaston>`__: modernization of the Python test suite and Python bindings.
+- `Norman Barker <https://github.com/normanb>`__: JPIPKAK and TileDB drivers, PSC member.
+- `Dmitry Baryshnikov <https://github.com/bishopgis>`__: SXF and CAD drivers and the GNM component.
+- `Pete Bunting <https://github.com/petebunting>`__: KEA driver.
+- `Ragi Yaser Burhum <https://github.com/rburhum>`__: FileGDB driver.
+- Brian Case: LIBKML driver.
+- `Victor Chernetsky <https://github.com/vchernetsky>`__: AmigoCloud driver.
+- Benjamin Collins: SWIG Java bindings.
+- Christopher Condit: OGR to KML conversion.
+- `Nyall Dawson <https://github.com/nyalldawson>`__: GeoPackage, OpenFileGDB, ODBC/PGeo and OGR core enhancements. Past co-maintainer.
+- `Jürgen Fischer <https://github.com/jef-n/>`__: NAS driver.
+- `Alessandro Furieri <https://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins>`__: Spatialite support in SQLite driver, enhancements in GML driver.
+- `Andrea Giudiceandrea <https://github.com/agiudiceandrea>`__: documentation fixes
+- `Ari Jolma <https://github.com/ajolma>`__: Author of (ex) SWIG Perl bindings.
+- `Trent Hare <https://github.com/thareusgs>`__: PDS, ISIS2 and ISIS3 drivers.
+- `Björn Harrtell <https://github.com/bjornharrtell>`__: FlatGeoBuf driver.
+- `Thomas Hirsch <https://github.com/relet>`__: SOSI driver.
+- François Hissel: Selafin driver.
+- `Pirmin Kalberer <https://github.com/pka>`__: Interlis drivers.
+- `Andrey Kiselev <https://github.com/dron>`__: BMP, HDF4, HDF5, L1B, MrSID and RMF support, gdal_grid, past PSC member.
+- `Dan Jacobson <https://github.com/jidanni>`__: documentation enhancements.
+- `Kor de Jong <https://github.com/kordejong>`__: PCRaster driver.
+- Chaitanya Kumar CH: past GDAL maintainer.
+- `Martin Lambers <https://github.com/marlam>`__: GTA driver.
+- `Martin Landa <https://github.com/landam>`__: VFK driver.
+- `Kikitte Lee <https://github.com/kikitte>`__: Two-Arm chains edge tracing algorithm of gdal_polygonize.
+- `Alexandr Lisovenko <https://github.com/alisovenko>`__: SXF driver
+- `Mateusz Łoskot <https://github.com/mloskot>`__: GeoJSON driver, (ex) Windows CE support, past GDAL maintainer.
+- `Ivan Lucena <https://github.com/IvanLucena>`__: Idrisi, Intergraph and Oracle drivers, (ex) Windows build scripts.
+- `Hugo Mercier <https://github.com/mhugo>`__: marching square algorithm of gdal_contour
+- `Idan Miara <https://github.com/idanmiara>`__: gdal-utils Python package.
+- `Martin Mikita <https://github.com/martinmikita>`__: PDFium backend of the PDF driver.
+- `Hiroshi Miura <https://github.com/miurahr>`__: Initial CMake build system.
+- `Vincent Mora <https://github.com/vmora>`__: WAsP driver
+- `Daniel Morissette <https://github.com/dmorissette>`__: CPL library, MapInfo .mif/.tab and Arc/Info vector coverage (AVC) support, PSC member.
+- Denis Nadeau: netCDF support.
+- `Markus Neteler <https://github.com/neteler>`__: various contributions to GDAL documentation
+- Adam Nowacki: WMS driver.
+- Jens Oberender: KML driver.
+- `Alessandro Passoti <https://github.com/elpaso>`__: co-maintainer, from 2022 to date.
+- `Kai Pastor <https://github.com/dg0yt>`__: contributions to the CMake build system.
+- `Abel Pau <https://github.com/AbelPau>`__: MiraMon driver.
+- `Matthew Perry <https://github.com/perrygeo>`__: gdaldem
+- Mark Phillips: TIGER driver.
+- `Lucian Plesea <https://github.com/lucianpls>`__: ESRIC and MRF drivers.
+- `Petr Pridal <https://github.com/klokan>`__: gdal2tiles utility.
+- `Paul Ramsey <https://github.com/pramsey>`__: GeoPackage and FileGDB drivers.
+- Bas Retsios: MSG driver.
+- Didier Richard: Geoconcept driver.
+- Kevin Ruland: SWIG bindings refactor.
+- `Maxim Rylov <https://github.com/mrylov>`__: Hana driver.
+- `Michael Scholz <https://github.com/michikommader>`__: OpenDRIVE driver.
+- `Kurt Schwehr <https://github.com/schwehr>`__: code linting through the whole codebase, PSC member.
+- `Avyav Kumar Singh <https://github.com/avyavkumar>`__: enhancements in the OGR geometry suport, SFCGAL support.
+- `Craig de Stigter <https://github.com/craigds>`__: port of GDAL Python autotest suite to the pytest framework.
+- `Michael Sumner <https://github.com/mdsumner>`__: documentation enhancements, vrt:// enhancements.
+- `Tamas Szekeres <https://github.com/szekerest>`__: SWIG CSharp bindings, gdal_viewshed, PSC member.
+- `Alan Thomas <https://github.com/atlight>`__: major enhancements in the DXF driver.
+- `Etienne Tourigny <https://github.com/etiennesky>`__: major enhancements in the netCDF driver.
+- Philippe Vachon: COASP, GFF, JaxaPalsar, TSX drivers.
+- Stephane Villeneuve: OGR Feature Style support, MapInfo .mif.
+- `Yorick de Wid <https://github.com/yorickdewid>`__: LVBAG driver.
+- Chris Yesson: gdaldem
+
+Graphical contributions:
+
+- Marin Byrne: for producing the current GDAL icon set (based on the earlier version by Martin Daly).
+- Darek Krawczyk: for producing design of the initial GDAL Team Member t-shirt (based on Marin's and Martin's graphics).
+- `Joe Morrison <https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-morrison>`__: for producing the new `GDAL t-shirt <https://teespring.com/gdal?pid=387&cid=101810>`__
+
+Packaging:
+
+- Alpine Linux: `Holger Jaekel <https://github.com/hjaekel>`__
+- Debian: `Bas Couwenberg <https://github.com/sebastic>`__, `Francesco Paolo Lovergine <https://github.com/fpl>`__
+- Conda-Forge: `Filipe Fernandes <https://github.com/ocefpaf>`__, `Daryl Herzmann <https://github.com/akrherz>`__ and `others <https://github.com/conda-forge/gdal-feedstock/graphs/contributors>`__
+- Fedora: `Sandro Mani <https://github.com/manisandro>`__
+- GISInternals: `Tamas Szekeres <https://github.com/szekerest>`__
+- Homebrew: `GDAL Homebrew maintainers <https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commits/master/Formula/g/gdal.rb>`__
+- MS4W: `Jeff McKenna <https://github.com/jmckenna>`__
+- OpenBSD: `Landry Breuil <https://github.com/landryb>`__
+- OSGeo4W: `Jürgen Fischer <https://github.com/jef-n/>`__
+- netBSD: `Greg Troxel <https://github.com/gdt>`__
+- Spack: `Adam J. Stewart <https://github.com/adamjstewart>`__
+- Ubuntu: `Angelos Tzotsos <https://github.com/kalxas>`__
+- vcpkg: `Kai Pastor <https://github.com/dg0yt>`__
+
+You can also consult `Frank Warmerdam's sponsors, acknowledgments and credits <http://web.archive.org/web/20130509110604/http://www.gdal.org/credits.html>`__ for the period 1998-2010.
+
+.. below is an allow-list for spelling checker.
+
+.. spelling::
+    Daho
+    Arevalo
+    Ragi
+    Yaser
+    Burhum
+    Chernetsky
+    Condit
+    Giudiceandrea
+    Björn
+    Harrtell
+    Hirsch
+    François
+    Hissel
+    Lambers
+    Landa
+    Kikitte
+    Alexandr
+    Lisovenko
+    Mercier
+    Mikita
+    Hiroshi
+    Miura
+    Mora
+    Markus
+    Neteler
+    Nowacki
+    Jens
+    Oberender
+    Passoti
+    Kai
+    Pau
+    Plesea
+    Pridal
+    Bas
+    Retsios
+    Didier
+    Rylov
+    Scholz
+    suport
+    Etienne
+    Tourigny
+    Vachon
+    Stephane
+    Villeneuve
+    Yorick
+    Wid
+    Byrne
+    Daly
+    Darek
+    Krawczyk
+    Couwenberg
+    Herzmann
+    Filipe
+    Fernandes
+    Sandro
+    Angelos
+    Tzotzos
+    Landry
+    Breuil
+    Holger
+    Jaekel
+    Francesco
+    Paolo
+    Lovergine
+    netBSD
+    Troxel
+    Chaitanya
+    Kumar
+    CH