We use — and create — open source software and open data wherever we can. It isn’t ideology; it is simply what makes our work better, more transparent and longer-lived.
Why open source
You can see, and change, how it works. When the source code is open, a tool can be inspected, improved and adapted by whoever is best placed to do it. Bugs are easier to find and fix, and an application can keep evolving long after its first release.
Improvements are shared. The right to reuse and redistribute code means a whole community benefits from each other’s work, instead of everyone solving the same problems over and over.
It builds a living ecosystem. The freedom to use software for any purpose grows a large community of users — which in turn sustains support and customization, and attracts the contributors who keep raising the quality.
No black boxes. With open source there is nothing hidden inside. For many experts that transparency has become a precondition for software you can genuinely depend on.
Many of our own projects result in open source software, and every day we build on the shoulders of the open geospatial and data-science communities.