52°North refers to the degree of latitude which intersects the founding organizations' home - the city of Münster, Germany.

52°North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH is an international research and development company whose mission is to promote the conception, development and application of free open source geo-software for research, education, training and practical use. 52°North backs an open initiative, which is driven by leading research organizations and individuals in the international GIS field. Partners participate in research and development with focii on Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), Web Security and Digital Rights Management (DRM), as well as Web Processing. The partners have a long and outstanding record in the domain of spatio-temporal modeling, geoinformatics, Internet technologies, visualization technologies, software architecture, and standardization processes. 52°North partners are actively involved in the OGC standardization process for Sensor Web Enablement and Digital Rights Management as well as in INSPIRE drafting teams.

Being a small company itself, 52°North makes use of resources provided by its partner organizations in order to form an optimal team of highly specialized experts for any given project. The company supports the initiative organizationally and financially via: a) management and coordination of research and open source software development, b) quality assurance testing for open source software c) provision of legal certainty and security for developers and users of 52°North open source software. Although it is a company limited by shares (GmbH), it acts as a non-profit organization. The shareholders receive neither profit shares nor other payments from company funds.