At FOSS4G Europe last summer, the local chapter “OSGeo-Europe” was officially founded. Till Adams, co-founder of terrestris, was elected to the Board of Directors.
As a local chapter, OSGeo-Europe is on the same level as other regional OSGeo chapters, but focuses more on European institutions.
One of the goals of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is the dissemination and promotion of open source software for geoinformatics. Further goals are knowledge transfer, OpenData and open collaborations. These goals are pursued both globally by OSGeo and regionally by the so-called Local Chapters. For example, the official German-speaking Local Chapter, the FOSSGIS e.V., organizes the German-speaking FOSSGIS conference once a year and acts as a contact for FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) interested parties and the community in the German-speaking area.
A corresponding counterpart at the European level has been missing until now. OSGeo-Europe is now intended to fill this gap.
Through this article by the Copernicus Support Office about the OSGeo community, contact was made between Till Adams and the Support Office. The first official inaugural visit took place last Thursday in Brussels. Till Adams was accompanied by the President of OSGeo-Europe, Dirk Frigne. In an initial discussion, potential points of contact and possible joint activities between the European Copernicus program and OSGeo were discussed.
All participants agreed that it makes sense to use such a cooperation as a medium to bring the Earth observation and OSGeo communities closer together. This goal was already pursued by Till Adams for FOSS4G 2016 in Bonn with the definition of “Core Topics”. One of these core contents was the topic “Earth Observation” and should now experience its consistent continuation.
In addition to improving mutual perception, topics such as the development of sustainable open source technology with the support of OSGeo or know-how transfer for tools and data were also discussed.
After the successful kick-off date, further meetings and joint activities will follow in the coming months.
