The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profitnon-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatialtechnologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Libre/Free and open-source geospatial community.[2] It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources.
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.
The foundation pursues goals beyond software development, such as promoting more open access to government produced geospatial data, FAIR_data geodata, and geodata created and maintained by the OpenStreetMap project. Education and training are also addressed. Various committees within the foundation work on implementing strategies.
Governance
The OSGeo Foundation is community driven and has an organizational structure consisting of elected members and nine directors, including the president.[1] Software projects have their own governance structure, by requirement. see FAQ. The OSGeo community collaborates via a Wiki, Mailing Lists and IRC.
Projects
Several OSGeo projects can communicate with each other and other geographical tools.
OSGeo projects include:
Geospatial Libraries
FDO – API (C++, .Net) between GIS application and sources; for manipulating, defining and analyzing geospatial data.
GDAL/OGR – Library between GIS application and sources; for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats (GDAL) and simple features vector data (OGR).
GeoTools – Open source GIS toolkit (Java); to enable the creation of interactive geographic visualization clients.
OSGeo runs an annual international conference called FOSS4G – Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial. Starting as early as 2006, this event has drawn over 1100 attendees (2017 Boston) and the tendency is to increase this number every year. It is the main meeting place and educational outreach opportunity for OSGeo members, supporters and newcomers - to share and learn from one another in presentations, hands-on workshops and a conference exhibition. The FOSS4G ribbon, part of every FOSS4G event logo, symbolizes the flow of ideas, innovation, and sharing within the Open Source geospatial community. The event history dates back to an important face-to-face meeting of the 3 original founders of the event (Venkatesh Raghavan, Markus Neteler, and Jeff McKenna), who met initially in Bangkok Thailand in 2004, and planned to create a new annual event for the whole Open Source geospatial community, with the event named "FOSS4G"; the event would go on to help change the history of the geospatial industry.
There are also many regional and local events following this FOSS4G philosophy.[4]
Community
The OSGeo community is composed of participants from everywhere in the world. As of 24 May 2020[update], there were 35,176 unique subscribers to the more than 384 OSGeo mailing lists. As of September 2012[update], OSGeo projects were built upon over 12.7 million lines of code contributed by 657 code submitters including 301 that have contributed within the last 12 months.[5]
Sol Katz Award
The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.
