[Board] ESA Open Call letter of support

[Vasile Craciunescu]

**

*Dear board members,*

*

I hope my message finds you all well. I come in front of you with a kind request with my Terrasigna hat [1], a small company from Bucharest, specialized in working with satellite data, that has a long collaboration history with ESA and NASA. During the past weeks, we had a number of interactions with those entities to discuss how it is best for them to better embrace the free and open source values. One interaction was in person, at the Living Planet Symposium [2] where some very important people from our community were also present. During those discussions I introduced the idea of creating an open source geospatial software repository that will function as an extended metadata catalog, curated by the community and a tool for metrics computation, visualization, ecosystem statistical analysis and reporting. This was based on a previous experience of us coordinating a position paper on open source geospatial software under the EARSC [3] umbrella. The report also had this 
interactive graph of our FOSS4G ecosystem [4] at that time. We were encouraged to try to apply with a project project proposal to implement such an idea at "Future EO-1 EO Science for Society Permanently Open Call for Proposals" of ESA [5].


Beside the project proposal text, the evaluators are seeking for support letters. And this is why I'm sending you this lengthy message. I'm kindly asking OSGeo to support this project proposal and provide such a letter. If I remember correctly, it's something that was done in the past. I really think this is something in-line with OSGeo values and that our entire community can benefit if such an initiative can become reality. The only really stressful thing is that the deadline is June 24.


Thank you for taking the time to read this message!


Warm regards,

Vasile


[1] http://www.terrasigna.com <http://www.terrasigna.com>

[2] https://lps22.esa.int <https://lps22.esa.int>

[3] https://earsc.org <https://earsc.org>

[4] http://pathfinder.terrasigna.com/oss <http://pathfinder.terrasigna.com/oss>

[5] https://eo4society.esa.int/2021/12/01/open-call-for-proposals-2020-future-eo-1-programme <https://eo4society.esa.int/2021/12/01/open-call-for-proposals-2020-future-eo-1-programme>*

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