Floss in Cadastre and Land Registration

Incubation in OSGeo

OSGeo’s mission is to support the development of open-source geospatial soft-

ware, and promote its widespread use. To make this reality, projects are required 

to prove they can run effectively as community driven projects and have processes 

in place to assure continuity and quality. After consultation with the advisory 

board, it was decided during the workshop of 2007 to propose the GeoNetwork 

project for incubation into OSGeo. Although it was a logical next step for the 

project, it was also a courageous decision by the advisory board and by FAO man-

agement. It meant that the FAO had less control; it was giving away control of a 

project it needed and had invested in for years. The existing project steering com-

mittee was renamed Advisory Board and a new Project Steering Committee (PSC) 

was established consisting of seven members that would democratically decide 

about the new developments proposed for the software. Formalized procedures 

were established to support the PSC in the project management. A full source 

code review helped to remove source code that had a conflicting license in relation 

to the GPL license GeoNetwork is released under. After about a year of project 

management by the PSC, incubation into OSGeo was completed and the project 

was voted in as a full fledged OSGeo project.