Software pilots
In addition to the headwaters project, we focused on smaller software pilot projects addressing ecosystem resilience, security, with some expected and some surprising benefits.
OCI Compliance and Podman
Willow helped us solve two problems. The first is the problem of bringing the WebODM ecosystem Open Container Initiative (OCI) compliance. This is a general need to ensure that OpenDroneMap can be used in multiple containerized environments, ensuring that docker isn’t the only way to run WebODM in a container.
In her own words:
[A]s a part of a project to get the full stack working on Podman, I’d made some modifications to webodm.sh to assist users in debugging. The --debug flag now prints further information about the user’s environment, including the value of their DOCKER_HOST environment variable as well as the versions of docker and docker-compose they’re using. It also detects some edge-cases that may lead to unintended crashes, and will suggest things the user should look at in case they’re affected.
She also submitted documentation for using WebODM with podman in docs.opendronemap.org) as an alternative containerization environment. I would have really appreciated having this in place back during my high performance computing admin days! I expect that others will appreciate the additional flexibility, and it provides us important future-proof alternatives as the broader landscape of containerization tools grows and changes. Yay for ecosystem resilience! Bonus points for rootless containers.
Cost
Cost for this project was $3500 USD, and it completed in the wee hours of 2025, right on time.