212 GeoNetwork opensource is a standards based and decentralized spatial information management environment, designed to enable access to geo-referenced databases, cartographic products and related metadata from a variety of sources, enhancing the spatial information exchange and sharing between organizations and their audience, using the power of the Internet. This approach of geographic information management provides a wide community of spatial information users with easy and timely access to available spatial data and to existing thematic maps that support informed decision-making. The main goal of the GeoNetwork opensource software is to improve the accessibility of a wide variety of data, together with the associated information, at different scale and from multidisciplinary sources, organized and documented in a standard and consistent way. GeoNetwork opensource has initially been developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the UN World Food Program, The UN Environment Programme and is rapidly expanding its project community beyond the UN system. FOSS4G2006 - Free And Open Source Software for Geoinformatics Session 8 : Use - FOSS and NONFOSS Jeroen Ticheler jeroen.ticheler@fao.org Jeroen Ticheler jeroen.ticheler@fao.org <MaKaC.conference.ContributionType object at 0xb483a0ec> SDI-USE