Legal entity of Europe OSGeo and Horizon call

Local Chapters Europe
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Dear Europeans, dear OSGeo members,

May the New Year bring you more clarity, kindness and a bit of luck in these interesting times.

As you all know, we’ve been circling around the idea of having an European OSGeo legal entity for years now and although we’ve never fallen short of interested community members, we’ve still been working to coagulate our efforts to give it legal shape and operational colours.

In 2016, Dirk Frigne very well described why an European Local Chapter of OSGeo should exist, in a place where Local Chapters with robust legacies, strong communities and monthly activities and meetings are active.

Those reasons have not changed and even more, our OSGeo community is currently presented with an opportunity in the European Union that we should not miss. On the 14th of January the European Commission has launched a Horizon Europe call for proposals “A services and business incubator for geospatial open-source developments HORIZON-CL6-2026-03-GOVERNANCE-06” that is perfectly suited for a European OSGeo. The OSGeo board discussed about the call during this year’s first meeting and indeed, we need to move fast to also have time of joining a consortium and working at a proposal. To do that, we need a simple legal entity and a smooth running structure. As many other similar US organisations have done it, such as OGC or the Linux Foundation, OSGeo European would be the European legal entity of the Foundation, governed by the same values and principles, established with OSGeo bylaws and led by the same OSGeo board for the benefit of the OSGeo community. The European legal entity as such, would not become an extra, intermediary layer between OSGeo and the Local Chapters. It would be the official OSGeo partner for European institutions and agencies and participate in funding calls like the one mentioned above.

Led by OSGeo board, in the spirit of the foundation, the European OSGeo will structure itself in committees to work on issues of interest, such as funding calls like the one above or on the organisation of FOSS4G Europe conferences.

As time flies, we would like to have a practical discussion on how to advance and address this Horizon call on Wednesday, starting with 7:30 PM UTC+2 (https://meet.jit.si/OSGeoEurope).

Warm regards from Bucharest,

Codrina,

On behalf of the OSGeo Board

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Hi Codrina, all,

I am in favour of moving forwards this way. I agree we shouldn’t wait any longer to set up a legal entity representing the OSGeo Foundation in Europe. Moreover, this shouldn’t in any way hinder the Working Group currently consulting and designing a governance or collaboration framework to assemble the local chapters in Europe. If necessary other legal instruments may be deployed in addition to this initial entity.

Regards.

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Hello,

@codrina Are you planning the meeting for 2026/01/28 7:30 PM UTC+2 ? [corrected]

I’m very much interested in following this subject, and should you need my help, I have been involved in the creation of several similar organizations in Europe.

In fact, I’m looking for partners in order to join or establish a consortium to bring Open Source projects and technologies in the Horizon Europe program.

I’ll be in Brussels until the 3rd February, should you care to talk in person.

Best Regards - Business Open Source Portugal

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Wednesday is January 28th

On Tue, 27 Jan 2026, 18:19 Gerardo Lisboa via OSGeo Discourse, <noreply@discourse.osgeo.org> wrote:

gvlx
January 27

Hello,

@codrina Are you planning the meeting for 2026/01/27 7:30 PM UTC+2 ?

I’m very much interested in following this subject, and should you need my help, I have been involved in the creation of several similar organizations in Europe.

In fact, I’m looking for partners in order to join or establish a consortium to bring Open Source projects and technologies in the Horizon Europe program.

I’ll be in Brussels until the 3rd February, should you care to talk in person.

Best Regards - Business Open Source Portugal

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corrected. thanks.

:man_facepalming:

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I only picked up on this topic up now. Are there any notes from the meeting on Wednesday allowing us to catch up?

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Hi, Dennis!

Sadly we didn’t take any notes this time, we’ll do better on our next talk (not yet scheduled).

Participants to this meeting were: @kalxas , @doublebyte , @ticheler , @jjimenezshaw , @tkardi and myself. I apologise if I forgot anyone.

The discussion revolved around the clear necessity for a legal entity for OSGeo in EU for access to European funding, in whatever way it would come (participating in HE calls, sponsorships etc ). In this spirit the OSGeo board passed a motion on loomio’ authorising Jeroen Ticheler to undertake all necessary actions to establish the legal entity, including engaging legal counsel, filing required documentation, and making decisions required during the incorporation process. The OSGeo board will govern the newly established European legal entity, assuring coherence with the international org and providing support to its projects and committees.

We also discussed about the HE call on services and business incubator for geospatial open-source developments and what role could OSGeo Europe play. @ticheler announced his participation to FOSDEM where he would open discussions regarding this with other potential partners.

If I’ve missed something, please add.

Cheers,

Codrina

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Thanks for that summary Codrina!

At FOSDEM I have connected in person with staff from NLNet, who will be leading a consortium of which OSGeo intends to be part of. A first f2f meeting on practicalities will be scheduled within the coming two weeks in Utrecht (NL).

If you have ideas of critical components that should be taken care of in this HE call that will support OSGeo as a foundation as well as its projects, please provide such ideas here and preferably also by email to me.

Kind regards,

Jeroen

1 Like