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Once an ecosystem restoration or protection project is underway, at least all partners but also many other stakeholders are wondering: “How is the project doing?” This very general question can be broken down into numerous other questions, like “which percentage of the project area has already been planted?

Not only the recent Earth Day of 2021 has made it clear once again that our planet is in a very poor condition. The atmosphere is heating up at an alarming rate, the forests are being cut down with ever increasing speed and the loss of biodiversity is something that humankind has never seen happening at this scale before. The scope of these problems are daunting and HERMOSA is setting out to provide projects with the much needed software support and transparency through the analysis of Earth observation data. In this context there are two questions regarding the role of HERMOSA.

When restoring ecosystems usually several stakeholders are involved. First of all the local community will be involved, often supported by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) who will assume management functions. The local or regional government will have a role to play, as well as some organisation – maybe a large corporation – providing the funding which is essential for the project to happen in the first place.

Software is codified knowledge and in essence a text file with a number of commands. Whatever we do nowadays, making a phone call, driving a car, booking a hotel or restoring ecosystems would not be possible without software. The software landscape can be divided into two fundamental sections: proprietary and free software. Why is this so?