It is admirable to observ how the #FOSS way value&the 💪 of building 💻 solutions following the #FOSS principles is gaining momentum within 🌍 organisations. In 2025, 🇺🇳 UN officially 🚀 the Open Source United, a UN-wide initiative to coordinate and scale📈 open source efforts across its entire system. This week, the United Portal 🚀 👉 https://opensource.un.org/en. When it comes to geospatial, we can only encourage 🇺🇳 to blend in the already mature #FOSS4G ecosystem as can be easily seen in the @OSS4gEO

#FOSS is expensive 💸 ... when you don't do it right. According to one of the latest reports📝 of the @linuxfoundation the #ROI for companies that contribute back to the #FOSS projects they depend on is between 2-5X, while for the ones passively consuming (and forking privately) it actually turns into technical debt on the medium-long term. Check out the report and the data 📚 it relies on 👉 https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/contribution-roi?hsLang=en

Since @CopernicusEU was known as #GMES, there was a❓in the back of everyones' 🧠: will we have the capacity to fully benefit from the Sentinels? A lot has happened since the S-1A🚀 and 2 decades later, the direction of full exploitation of Copernicus data is driven by #FOSS 💪
@developmentseed, EOX& thriveGEO, supported by @esa launched the #EOPF #Sentinel @zarr Explorer, an ecosystem supporting cloud-native exploitation and visualisation of Earth Observation data! 📖 👉 https://developmentseed.org/blog/2026-02-13-eopf-explorer-launch/

February is a special month 💌 but for the geospatial community it is even more. It is @osgeo month! Yet this year is special 👑 OSGeo turns 20! 🎂 It is hard to imagine what the #FOSS4G ecosystem would have looked like without OSGeo and it is definitely worth looking at the almost incredible achievements, obtained guided by the founding principles:
👉🏿Openness and transparency 
👉🏿Active Contribution and collaboration
👉🏿Institutional Neutrality
Happy birthday, @osgeo 🥂🥂🥂 📯https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/happy-birthday-osgeo-celebrating-20-years-of-free-and-open-source-software-for-geospatial/

#BiDS25 is a 🇪🇺 conference happening every 2 years under the joint ☂️ of the @EUCommission JRC, #ESA and #satcen . In 2025, the conference was held in the beautiful city of Riga 🇱🇻 and brought together ➕ 700 participants, with a multitude of ✨ great talks, keynotes and satellite events. The wonderful thing is that the recordings are now available. Enjoy! 🎥 🍿 🗒️ 👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnSE1oBkkODeDtMnIjKSVuQ8J-0rMms_

@fosdem 2026 held in #Brussels 🇧🇪 has just concluded and even thought it is not #geospatial dedicated, it is definitely worth browsing through its sessions 👉 https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/, such as the 'CRA in practice' or 'Funding the FOSS ecosystem'. If one is too curious and can't wait for the processing, the raw 📹 are available to download from the video recordings archive. 👉 https://video.fosdem.org/2026/

📯📯📯 The call for workshop 💻 submissions @foss4geurope is open! 👉 https://talks.osgeo.org/foss4g-europe-2026-workshops/cfp

In the western 🌎 part of the world, 🗓️ 14th of February is celebrated as ♥️Valentin’s day ♥️ @fsfe put a wonderful spin ✨ 💞 on it and made it the “I Love Free Software Day” Check it out 👉🏿 https://fsfe.org/activities/ilovefs/

The critical importance 🧨 of the foundational #FOSS in the digital infrastructure on top of which we build our services and products, be it geospatial or not, is no secret and we are still to find the ⚖️ between community sustainability and commercial viability. 🆘 Yet another example, this time from the #CNCF world 🚧 🚨 #minIO 👉🏿 https://medium.com/@heinancabouly/minios-maintenance-mode-a-wake-up-call-for-the-cncf-ecosystem-38add3bc6c4f

Podcasts have gained 📈 popularity in the last years and not without good reason.👂🏾 to experts sharing their experiences&views can be a wonderful way to spend a commute 🚗 or a relaxing 🚶‍♀️🌳. One great 🎙️ that we can’t recommend enough is @MapScaping. Highlighting today is the 🗣️ with @jodygarnett. Drawing from his decades-long experience with @geoserver, he talks about the pressure of security vulnerabilities in the open-source ecosystem and lays down potential solutions. 👂🏾🎙️👉🏿 https://mapscaping.com/podcast/free-software-and-expensive-threats/