The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Free and open source geospatial community. It will also serve as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit.
OSGeo draws governance inspiration from several aspects of the Apache Foundation, including a membership composed of individuals drawn from foundation projects who are selected for membership status based on their active contribution to foundation projects and governance.
OSGeo projects include:
- MapBuilder
- GeoTools
- Mapbender
- MapGuide Open Source
- MapServer
- GDAL/OGR
- GeoNetwork opensource
- GRASS GIS
- OpenLayers
- OSSIM GIS
- FDO
- Quantum GIS
The foundation is pursuing goals beyond software development, such as promoting more open access to government produced geospatial data and completely free geodata such as is created and maintained by the OpenStreetMap project. Also education and training are addressed. Various committees within the foundation work on implementing strategies.
Governance
The OSGeo is thoroughly community driven and has a lightweight organizational overhead consisting of 45 initial members, 9 directors and the president Frank Warmerdam. It is organized in more than 20 projects. Twelve of these (March 2007) focus on software development projects (see above) or organizational matters like board issues, web site, visibility, education, public geodata and promotion. The OSGeo community collaborates via a Wiki, Mailing Lists and IRC.
See also
- Free Software
- Open Source
- Open Geospatial Consortium – a standards organization