Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Open Source Geospatial Foundation

OSGeo supports open geospatial development through shared institutions and infrastructure. The US nonprofit’s support role and GDAL are scoped here, rather than counting the separate QGIS association’s work again.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 78–88/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: Shared legal, organizational and geospatial-library infrastructure can help nonprofit implementers reuse data-conversion and analysis capabilities.

Open-source evidence · license checked

  • GDAL/OGR — MIT-style general grant; bundled component notices differ license file. Organization’s role: steward.
    Inspected the named repository’s general grant and multiple component notices. OSGeo provides an institutional home, not sole development; separate QGIS work, data rights, dependencies, third-party drivers and hosted services are outside this packet. License-file snapshot: cd24b533bddcf6971fa61ef2622abd1a90b188fc.

License checked 2026-10-27. This is not a security audit, proof of current support or effectiveness, or a promise of free hosting. A sponsor or steward is not necessarily the sole developer. Unchecked profiles are not evidence of closed code. No extra score points are added.

Humanity’s Checklist source match

Gatekeepers · Coordination — editorial, partial alignment.

Reusable geospatial libraries and shared institutions can lower proprietary barriers and coordinate contributions. This partial connection does not establish fair spatial decisions or community data authority.

Explicit checklist adoption: not verified. A mechanism match is not an affiliation, endorsement, evidence of effectiveness or a scoring bonus. Read the practice.

Focus classification: 2026-10-27. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.

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The proposed pathway

Provide common legal, organizational and technical support for reusable geospatial infrastructure

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

3 / 4

Common legal and technical infrastructure can lower collaboration and data-format barriers, rather than repeatedly fund isolated proprietary conversions.

Institutional reach

4 / 4

Reusable geospatial libraries can support many public-interest applications across environment, humanitarian response and planning.

Durability

3 / 4

Shared libraries, formats and organizational knowledge can persist, with ongoing maintenance and interoperability work still necessary.

Scalability

4 / 4

Common libraries and support processes can be reused across deployments while integration, data quality and local capacity remain costly.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

No current marginal US foundation funding gap or allocation between foundation, project sponsors and contributors was audited.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Charter-member participation and project committees do not establish affected communities’ binding rights over geospatial decisions or data.

Evidence and selection

Organization reported; current primary mechanism sources inspected; named repository and license file checked

Illustrative inclusion to examine this mechanism. Inclusion is not an external recommendation or a verified comparative ranking.

A testable next question

Does pooled support for GDAL-related infrastructure reduce duplicated integration work and improve reliable, contestable public-interest spatial analysis beyond existing support, without creating new data or maintenance bottlenecks?

Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. The US Open Source Geospatial Foundation’s nonprofit support model, using GDAL as its scoped example; not the Dutch Stichting, QGIS.org Association or a combined rating of every OSGeo project.

What remains uncertain

The official about page identifies the US nonprofit, EIN 72-1613215, and a separate Dutch Stichting whose ANBI request is described as under review. No independent tax-eligibility verification is claimed; older or development-site status descriptions are not substituted for current evidence. GDAL’s general MIT-style grant sits alongside component notices. The separately constituted QGIS association is not counted as OSGeo’s own program here. No geospatial accuracy, privacy, security or public-benefit audit occurred, and data licenses are distinct from software.

Sources to inspect

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Axis review: 2026-10-27 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage