geOrchestra is a spatial data infrastructure project whose founding characteristics are: free, modular, interoperable. This project is community driven.
By spatial data infrastructure, we mean a system that receives, transmits, stores and processes data identified in space and time.
By free, we mean a set of software that everyone can copy, use, understand and modify. We also mean that this set benefits from contributions from other free projects, and must reciprocally enrich these projects. Documentation is part of the package.
By modular and interoperable, we mean a system that is primarily designed to exchange data with third-party systems by means of standardized interfaces, and that has the ability to evolve by integrating modules that meet the same standards.
By community, we mean public administrations, research teams, private companies, software publishers, service providers, individuals, with the objective of co-managing a commons for the benefit of the greatest number, and in compliance with principles that guarantee the status of a commons.
In 2009, geOrchestra was designed as an online geographic information system with the aim of democratizing the use of data, in response to the obstacles that limit this use by all audiences: necessary skills, data difficult to obtain, insufficient IT infrastructures, cost of software, incompatible formats, non-open governance. By convergence of values, geOrchestra was built on the technical principles of INSPIRE. The desire of the original partners was to build a sustainable, reusable solution that would be based on the idea of subsidiarity - meaning that the issues should be managed at the local level when possible. This led to the adoption of the founding characteristics: free, modular, interoperable. With growing use cases over time, geOrchestra has gone beyond geographic data, beyond its native regional scope and beyond its original developers, retaining its founding characteristics.
geOrchestra evolves through the initiatives of its users and developers.
geOrchestra is represented by a steering committee made up of individuals involved in the project. These individuals do not represent any organization. The steering committee guarantees the project's compliance with the founding characteristics: free, modular, interoperable. It does so by setting the rules for contributing to the source code, by enforcing the right to speak within the community, by proposing an open and transparent decision-making process, with the systematic search for consensus.
The entire project is open: source code, documentation, discussions and decisions, executables, recipes, exchanges, issue tracking. This means that you don't have to ask anyone's permission to set it up and use it, and you can do so by mobilizing freely available knowledge.
The interfaces are described and do not depend on proprietary components. This means that you can adapt geOrchestra to your environment.
The community is open. The software allows interfaces to be translated into other languages. Development proposals that may have an impact on users are described, discussed and approved according to a transparent process.
Contribution to the code is open to any development team that is in line with the spirit of the manifesto and respects the rules for writing code and the architecture of the platform.
This manifesto is reviewed once a year by the assembled community.