The MapScaping Podcast - GIS, Geospatial, Remote Sensing, earth observation and digital geography1 Juli

Who Pays for Open Source?

Open source software runs a huge chunk of the geospatial world — but somebody still has to pay for it.

In this episode I sit down with Marco Bernasocchi creator of QField and CEO of OpenGIS.ch, to dig into the awkward question most open source projects avoid: how do you keep something free and open while paying real people to build and maintain it?

Marco has been in the open source world since 2007, and he's grown QField into a tool with over two million downloads and a team of 14 behind it. We talk through how the money actually works — from sponsored feature development, to donations, to the cloud service that now funds most of what they do. Marco makes a compelling case that the real product isn't the software at all; it's convenience. You can always run it yourself. Paying just makes life easier — and keeps the project alive for everyone who can't.

We also get into why he refuses to say "free software," what maintainer burnout really looks like, and his advice for any developer quietly drowning in a project they love but can't afford to keep running.

A candid conversation about money, sustainability, and being a good citizen in the open source ecosystem.

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Avsnitt(265)

Virtual Worlds for Physical AI Systems

In this episode I'm joined by Apurva Shah, co-founder and CEO of Duality AI, a company building virtual worlds — or "world models" for robots and physical AI systems. Apurva's path here is an unusual ...

4 Aug 49min

GPS, But 100 Times Stronger

My guest today is Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona, a company building the first commercial satellite navigation system. We get into why Tyler and his team are moving satellites into low Earth o...

29 Juli 43min

Turning Aerial Imagery Into a Searchable World

Vexcel isn't a household name — but you've almost certainly used their data. This aerial imaging company flies low-elevation aircraft across roughly 45 countries, capturing imagery at 7.5cm resolution...

28 Juli 55min

Cloud Native for the Rest of Us

What happens when you take cloud native geospatial out of the satellite-and-petabyte world and drop it into a small city with no budget and the world's slowest internet connection? In this episode, Da...

20 Juli 38min

Mapping With 360 Cameras

Jeffrey Martin is the co-founder and CEO of Mosaic, a company building 360-degree camera systems designed specifically for mapping. He's been obsessed with 360 imagery for over 20 years — he built one...

15 Juli 41min

The Great Retooling

Ian Schuler is the CEO of Development Seed — the team behind a lot of the open source tooling that quietly holds up the geospatial world. He's been at the helm for over a decade, and in this conversat...

23 Juni 44min

Earth Observation - The Invisible Industry

What is Earth observation, really — and why, after fifty years of satellite imagery, is it still not "mainstream"? In this episode, I'm joined by Aravind Ravichandran, founder of TerraWatch, an indepe...

17 Juni 1h 6min