The OpenWIS Association AISBL is an International Non-profit Organization that aims to facilitate collaboration on the development, promotion and sharing of open source software for the exchange of global meteorological information. The OpenWIS Association is made up of founding members, strategic partners and Associate members. OpenWIS is one of a number of projects owned and run by the OpenWIS Association on behalf of the WMO. OpenWIS itself is an Open source software for the exchange of global meteorological information and a sustainable solution for WIS compliance OpenWIS is an implementation of WMO Information System (WIS) and aims to perform the three functions required by the WIS, i.e. Global Information Support Centers (GISC), Data Collection and Production Centers (DCPC) and National Center (NC)). And WIS are in place to ensure the extension of WMO's policy on the free and unrestricted international exchange of meteorological and related data and products to the entire domain of such data and products used globally (WMO Bulletin Vol. 55). The WIS Technical Specification has been around since 2007. A new WIS Technical specification (2) won't be required until somewhere between 2025 and 2030. That means the OpenWIS Association needs to maintain the current specification for the foreseeable future. That brings with it some challenges. Namely, the Operating system version and core software packages for java, tomcat, postgres, Wildfly and associated middleware components. There are a number of dependencies that are intertwined. All software were built using prescribed versions of software. Any deviations from those levels could result in breakage of the OpenWIS Application. Recently, the NWS ran into a issue with GISC-Washington, when the systems were patched to address security vulnerabilities. GISC-Washington functionality broke. MDL developers worked diligently to upgrade core OpenWIS middleware software to more current levels. MDL serves as the development arm of NCO. MDL also serves as the Chair of the OpenWIS Technical Committee. MDL will continue in its leadership role in management as well as testing new versions of OpenWIS software before they are deployed at NCO.
