Jeroen Ticheler
CEO/Owner of GeoCat BV, GeoCat Geospatial S.L. and GeoCat Canada Ltd. – Chair and founder of the GeoNetwork opensource – OSGeo President of the Board of Directors.
GeoCat was founded by Jeroen in 2007. Jeroen studied Tropical Forestry at Wageningen University specialising in GIS and Remote Sensing. Following graduation in 1997, he worked for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome for nine years. Jeroen held various positions for the FAO in GIS/remote sensing and established the GeoNetwork opensource project. The FAO GeoNetwork is the first implementation based on this software, releasing a large quantity of geospatial data to the public.
Today GeoNetwork opensource is widely used as geospatial catalogue application with implementations from smaller projects to national and international level catalogs including National Geospatial & Open Data Registries and the INSPIRE GeoPortal in the EU.
Jeroen has been promoting the use of international standards and Free and Open Source Software for geographic data and information for over twenty years now. Jeroen is Project Officer for the GeoNetwork opensource project. He currently serves on the OSGeo Board, and did so in 2007 & 2008. He is a Charter member since the early days of OSGeo.
Besides everything geospatial Jeroen loves travel, carpentry, working on his overland truck, study Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology, and walk, work and live outside.
Sessions
Introduction to the OSGeo Foundation.
This session is aimed at developers, project leads, and organisational decision-makers who are navigating the question of how to sustain FOSS4G. We aim to leave attendees with a clearer framework for thinking about sustainability, and a more honest picture of what each path demands in practice.
Open source geospatial software powers critical infrastructure, research, and decision-making around the world — yet the question of how to sustain it remains one of the most pressing and underexplored challenges in our community. This presentation offers an experience-driven look at the business models behind open source sustainability, drawing on the lived experience of organisations that have built their work around open source libraries.
We examine three broad sustainability strategies — consulting-led, product-led, and hybrid approaches — exploring the trade-offs, tensions, and unexpected lessons each model brings. What does it actually take to keep a widely-used open source project healthy over the long term? Where do community interests and commercial realities align, and where do they diverge?
The conversation is made more timely by the European Commission's Cyber Resilience Act, which introduces the concept of open source stewardship as a formal responsibility. For organisations that develop, maintain, or depend on open source software, this represents both a new compliance consideration and a genuine opportunity to articulate and formalise the value of what we do.
This session is aimed at developers, project leads, and organisational decision-makers who are navigating these questions — whether just starting out or well into the journey. We aim to leave attendees with a clearer framework for thinking about sustainability, and a more honest picture of what each path demands in practice.