Geofabrik

Who we are
Geofabrik was created out of the conviction that free geodata created by
projects like OpenStreetMap will become increasingly attractive for
commercial uses.
Free, community-maintained data like that produced by the OpenStreetMap
project is a real alternative to the offerings of the trade's top players. Such
data is not only free of charge, but also comes with fewer license restrictions
than other offers.
 More about OpenStreetMap
 About free data and free software
Geofabrik GmbH was incorporated in late 2007 by Jochen Topf and Frederik
Ramm. Both have been working as software engineers and consultants in the
Internet industry for many years. Frederik Ramm and Jochen Topf regularly
give talks and workshops about OpenStreetmap or neogeography in general.
In February 2008, their German OpenStreetMap book was published by
Lehmanns. An English version is planned.
Frederik Ramm is an active OpenStreetMap contributor since 2006. He has
worked on distributed map rendering and played an important part in
specifying and introducing an improved data model in the autumn of 2007. He
was the lead developer of the JOSM editor for some time, and currently
maintains several mailing lists and tools for undo and revert in case of errors
or vandalism. He is board member of OSMF and a member of the OSMF Data
Working Group.
In 2011, Christine Karch has joined Frederik as a Geofabrik Managing
director. Even back when the business was founded, she had a hand in it and
designed the original Geofabrik web site. She's a physicist by trade, but has
spent most of her working life in software development. In OpenStreetMap
she's doing her part improving the networking among OSM developers and
runs the Karlsruhe Hack Weekends.
Rory McCann has worked at Geofabrik since 2014 and takes care of
Geofabrik's server infrastructure. He has contributed to OpenStreetMap since
2008 and operates the website townloads.ie which uses the townlands data
from OpenStreetMap.
After working as student associate during his computer science studies, Philip
Beelmann joined Geofabrik as software developer.
Michael Reichert joined Geofabrik in 2017 as software developer and map
designer. He has contributed to OpenStreetMap since 2011 and is a member
of the Germany OpenStreetMap blog (Wochennotiz) and its English
counterpart WeeklyOSM.
Jochen Topf has been with OpenStreetMap since 2006 as well. From 2007
until 2010 he was, together with Frederik Ramm, one of Geofabrik's Managing
Directors. But because Jochen preferred software development over
managing a business, he has returned to being a freelancer - including in
Geofabrik projects. In OpenStreetMap, Jochen is perhaps best known for
his Taginfo and Osmium projects. OSM also benefits from his regularly
updated OSMCoastline coastline data set.
Geofabrik has a network of freelancers with excellent OpenStreetMap
experience. In addition, a few students work for us in part-time jobs or
internships, and we regularly supervise students who do papers or theses on
OpenStreetMap topics.