Project roots and history
c:geo originated from an app developed by Radovan "carnero" Paška in 2010, whose first version 0.10 was released on 2010-01-25 (original website). Initially closed source, its original developer announced he would abandon the project and opensourced the app in summer 2011 (first commit, version 0.74.6 as of 2010-07-22) so the community could take on fixing it after numerous breakages from geocaching.com website changes.
On July 11th 2011, the c:geo project was first imported to its current GitHub location by Tomaž, a Slovenian geocacher and developer, with the most critical issues fixed (first commit, version 2.26 RC1a as of 2011-07-11). A week later, contributions began to flow to the project, mainly from Germany. The team grew progressively, with people coming by and leaving over the course of the years, and c:geo development continues to this day!
We are not sure where the name "c:geo" originated from. Our best guess is that it means "carnero: geocaching".
The original web site is long since down, but can still be viewed thanks to Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20100209004446/http://cgeo.carnero.cc/
The APK for a very early version of c:geo (1.42 from December 2010) can be downloaded here: APK (Warning: this is an APK originally developed for a much older version of Android and uploaded to GitHub. We cannot guarantee its integrity, please install only in a safe environment and at your own risk!)
Some other links commenting early versions of c:geo:
- Publishing of version 0.50.2 was e.g. announced here on 2010-05-13: https://www.nodch.de/cgeo-android-geocaching-testversion-mit-offline-support/1845/ (German)
- Early mention of c:geo (2010-09-15): http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/showthread.php?t=100192
- Early "how to" for c:geo (2012-12-03): https://www.svetandroida.cz/geocaching-na-androidu-1-dil-registrace-aplikace-cgeo-a-nastaveni/
- Interview with c:geo developer @samueltardieu (2013-05-27): https://geocaching-tof.fr/2013/05/27/cgeo-interview/ (French)
- Opensource announcement of cgeo by its original developer https://web.archive.org/web/20110629093854/http://post.carnero.cc/cgeo
- Interview with the original author (2025-04-15): https://www.svetandroida.cz/rozhovor-s-radovanem-paskou-autorem-aplikace-cgeo/
Here are some screenshots from one of the very first versions of c:geo:
(Information on this page was originally collected here: https://github.com/cgeo/cgeo/issues/8904)