[Board] OSGeo - ESA memorandum of intent

[Codrina Maria Ilie]

Hi, all,

I would like to point out that we have a draft for a Memorandum of Intent between OSGeo and the 
European Space Agency, for your review, published on our wiki https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MoU_ESA.

ESA has been collaborating with OSGeo for years now, either sponsoring or supporting FOSS4Gs, using 
and contributing back to OSGeo projects, participating in our events. As you know, ESA has invited 
and is supporting OSGeo to organize its community sprint at Big Data from Space 2023 conference in 
Vienna [https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Community_Sprint_2023].

This MoI is an important step forward for our collaboration, better framing our ongoing and future 
activities, as well as raising awareness in both communities, the space related and the OSGeo one - 
of our common values and principles leading to encouraging interoperability with open and community 
standards, fostering the use and development of open source geospatial software and doing so in an 
open and inclusive manner.

The 'Memorandum of Intent' and not 'Memorandum of Understanding' was used due to ESA's definition of 
these terms. In this particular case, MoI is the better choice because "Memorandum of Intent (MoI) 
is used for instruments that do not generate legal obligations for, or entail any exchange of funds 
between, the signatories. Conversely, the title “Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)” and its 
variations is used by the Agency for legally binding instruments entered into that, due to their 
legal and financial implications, are also subject to a more stringent approval process (since they 
need to be approved by our various boards/committees and Council)."


Cheers from Bucharest,
Codrina