The mapserver is an application that has been originaly designed by the University of Minnesota, but is now maintained by many contributors. The current website can be found at http://mapserver.org/.
Recently the mapserver has been exporting functions and methods to other languages. This extension is calle d Mapscript. Mapscript can be linked to perl, python, java and php.
Tiki can use the mapscript module to display and manage Maps and become a Geospastial Content Management System (GeoCMS).
Geographic image galleries, user preferences (latitude/longitude) are some features that can take advantage of the maps