Assignment6: Funding of Geonode

Funding of Geonode

To understanding the present funding mechanism in Geonode opensource software, one has to understand the origins of Geonode. OpenGeo is a leader in open source geospatial software development and support. It is a social enterprise working to build the best web-based geospatial technology and developed GeoNode, a new platform designed to promote the development of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) worldwide. Initially, it was purely an open source project.

As Geonode expanded from simple mapping application to a comprehensive robust system involving cartography, web design, and graphic design—especially in Django, Pinax, GeoServer, and OpenLayers; in March 2010, Geonode called out for partners to further develop their growing project in their blogpost. The company seeks to bring the best practices of open source software to geospatial organizations around the world by providing enterprises with supported, tested, and integrated open source solutions to build the Geospatial Web.

World Bank's quest to compute disaster risk modelling for developing countries in its international disaster reduction efforts matched OpenGeo's ambitions and they have partnered to build and release Geonode 1.0.

How does this affect the community

Since 2010, Geonode is supported and funded by World Bank. However, Geonode continued to remain open source and provide software to organizations involved in developmental activities. The project's roadmap is mainly decided by the requirements of the current state of developmental process in various organizations around the world, and the World Bank helps Geonode in this regard. Geonode's software is also enriched by the data treasure provided by World Bank. For instance, World Bank has set up a GeoNode instance at RCMRD that aims at sharing all the data collected by humanitarian and development agencies working on the Horn of Africa (HoA) drought response. The main goal of this project is to provide users with a single point of access to geospatial information, i.e., incorporation of web services from external data providers into One-Stop Geospatial platform that allows users to quickly and easily share data and create interactive maps.

Though World Bank helps Geonode in deciding its overall future goals, I do not find any direct interfernce of WorldBank in Geonode's day-to-day or software activities. The developers working at Geonode are free-willing to experiment with new features and improvements in their application. Since the core architecture is built on open software like Django, OpenGeo and Streetmaps,etc, Geonode software itself evolves due to latest technological improvements in the open software components they use.

Geonode's role in the greater technical ecosystem

Geonode is contibuted as well as contribute to the greater technical ecosystem. Major contributions from a number of organizations were essential to the developement and release of GeoNode. These include OpenGeo, the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, and Global Earthquake Model. The project has also greatly benefitted from volunteer efforts from the open source community.

The group of GeoNode partners and collaborators is growing rapidly. Developers and global organizations have responded enthusiastically to the project thus far, and OpenGeo is excited to meet the demand for a free, open source SDI with this new offering. Geonode is now being released for general public under GPL (General Public Lincence) which can be used for free in software and other kinds of works. Further, users can distribute copies of Geonode software or its source code is available on Geonode Github for public use thus contributing to the greater good of the society.

Few of the projects which use Geonode:

Caribbean Risk Atlas: The University of the West Indies (UWI) Disaster Risk Reduction Centre (DRRC) and the World Bank collaborated on the "Caribbean Risk Atlas" project with the main goal of making spatial data on risk for hurricanes, earthquakes and floods in the Caribbean available on-line. Mona GeoInformatics Institute (MGI) built the "Cariska" web map application for this project on the GeoNode platform.

CIGNo : The CIGNO (Collaborative Interoperable Geographic NOde) geoportal system is proposed to implement a system for heterogeneous multimedia data and metadata management (scientific and geographical, textual documents, tables, etc...). CIGNO can help users (stakeholders, administrators, scientists) to consult and exploit the scientific information provided by the ISMAR researchers.

Bolivia GeoNode : Bolivia is using GeoNode to develop a Geographical Data Infrastructure for the National Information System for Risk Reduction, composed by science and specialised sectors in the areas of; Risk management, Geological Survey, National Statistics, MilitaryGeographical Institute, Heath, Land, Water and education sectors. Each sector will have an instance of GeoNode, and all the be federated in one system orchestrated by the Civil Defence Office.

MapStory: MapStory, as a compliment to Wikipedia, is a new dimension to the global data commons that empowers a global user community to organize all knowledge about the world spatially and temporally. Just as Wikipedia uses a MediaWiki, MapStory uses a GeoNode.

MASDAP: The Government of Malawi, in partnership with the GFDRR labs of the World Bank is using GeoNode with data coming from the various ministries to build resilience to disasters in a changing climate.