Open Source Geospatial Foundation

Nonprofit organisation for mapping

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 Libre/Free and open source geospatial community. 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.

The OSGeo Foundation is community driven and has an organizational structure consisting of elected members and nine directors, including the president.

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.

The OSGeo community is composed of participants from everywhere in the world. as of 2020, there were 35,176 unique subscribers to the more than 384 OSGeo mailing lists. as of 2012, 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.

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.