Stefan Steinger - FOSS Desktop GIS Overview
Found via the Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source (CUGOS) website.
Very recent paper accepted by the International Journal of Geographical Information Science depitcs the current state of the art in FOSS Desktop GIS and much more. The staying power in the article however, IMHO, is the detailed explanation of the various FOSS license agreements which exist and the organisations which play a major role in the development of FOSSGIS as a whole. One of the most interesting tidbits for me was the realization that the Open Geospatial Consortium cannot be equated directly to the FOSSGIS movement.
A couple of people to which we spoke related the activities of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, www.opengeospatial.org) to open source GIS software. This link is not entirely correct, since the OGC is an organisation that develops standards for the processing and exchange of geo-data between different GIS platforms. Furthermore a large portion of the member organisations of the OGC, besides universities and authorities, are companies that develop proprietary GIS and Databases.
Link: http://cugos.googlegroups.com/web/sstein_foss_desktop_gis_overview.pdf