GeoCommons Background information

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Who is behind this?

This effort supporting geospatial commons is a significant effort by a partnership of twelve organisations. In alphabetical order:

Association Professionnelle Européenne du Logiciel Libre (APELL – BE)

APELL — The European Open Source Software Business Association brings national Open Source trade associations together into a European network to provide them with peer support and collective marketing, as well as capacity building and policy support for public affairs, both nationally and on the EU-level.

Center for the Cultivation of Technology (CCT – DE)

Non-profit host organisation for international Free Software projects, with ample experience in mentoring and nurturing early stage projects.

Commons Caretakers BV (CCBV – NL)

A not-for-profit company that provides targeted support to commons efforts - development of open source software, open hardware, open education materials and more. CCBV brings together domain experts, mentors and multidisciplinary thinkers and strategists.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE – DE)

Association that builds its work on over 1,500 volunteers and supporters throughout Europe, all dedicated to free and open source software. Facilitates the world’s largest network of over 400 lawyers and technologists with an interest in legal matters around free and open source software and hardware. FSFE maintains the leading Reuse.Software best practices on copyright assignment, and within GeoCommons helps projects to apply these – both with tooling and hands-on work.

HAN University of Applied Sciences dept. Inclusive Design & Engineering (HAN – NL)

HAN is one of the core competence building centres of accessibility in the Netherlands. HAN has significant in-house expertise on accessibility auditing, and for certification is supported by Accessibility.nl, the official WCAG certification body in the Netherlands and long-standing W3C member.

NixOS Foundation (NixOS – NL)

Non-profit that supports the development and use of purely functional configuration management tools, in particular NixOS and related projects. All projects within GeoCommons use the same state-of-the-art packaging system. Through the Summer of Nix capacity building programme, the NixOS Foundation has delivered many thousands of hours of packaging effort to its direct predecessor, the NGI ecosystem.

NLnet Foundation (coordinator – NL)

Public benefit organisation that introduced the internet in Europe in the eighties, and the driving force behind NGI Zero. NLnet is the coordinator of GeoCommons.

Non-Profit Ventures (NL)

Incubator and advisory organisation, focused on the creation of financially sustainable, mission-driven organisations. It specialises in non-extractive business models and steward-ownership structures, FOSS and digital sovereignty. NPV has incubated over 80 startups and produces the Post Growth Entrepreneurship course at UvA Business School.

Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo – NL)

Not-for-profit non-governmental organization with the mission 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.

OW2 (OW2 – FR)

OW2 is an independent, global, open-source software community that fosters open source projects and actually delivers software. The only such non-profit open source organisation of EU origin and DNA.

Radically Open Security (ROS – NL)

The world’s first not-for-profit security company, led by Dr. Melanie Rieback. Worked for major clients such as Mozilla, Google, the European Commission and Open Technology Fund. Co-operated the security auditing part of the emergency tech review facility for the European Commission on contact tracing and other COVID related technologies. ROS executes independent security scans on projects.

Tolerant Networks (TN – IE)

Tolerant Networks is a Trinity College Dublin campus company focused on robust interoperable communications mechanisms for extreme and unpredictable environments.

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Review Committee

NLnet has installed a Review Committee for GeoCommons. This Review Committe consists of independent experts from the internet and open source field, academia and the public sector. The committee is appointed for a period of one year, with the possiblity of renewal. The committee receives no remuneration for its work, and its members have no other economic interests with any projects funded by GeoCommons.

The Review Commitee receives the outcome of the selection process, and independently validates that all the projects that are selected are indeed eligible for funding, budgets are frugal, and that there are no other concerns.