[UW-GIS-L] Open Source GIS

[Paul Waddell]

Is anyone else on this list interested in exploring Open Source GIS tools?
I've used ESRI products for a long time (ok, I don't want to admit how
long), and am increasingly attracted to the prospect of a fully Open
Source approach to doing visualization and spatial data management - for a
variety of reasons.  I'm concentrating on Java-based tools so far,
since our development efforts in urban and environmental modeling are
implemented in Java.  I've been looking mainly at OpenMap
(http://openmap.bbn.com/), and a more recent arrival, JUMP
(http://www.vividsolutions.com/jump/).  We also make heavy use of MySQL,
an Open Source database that is quite robust and fast, and which contains
spatial extensions in release 4.1
(http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Spatial_extensions_in_MySQL.html).  These and
other free tools are linked at http://freegis.org.

If any of you are interested in exploring some of these tools and
potentially forming a subset of users who want to work on them, let me
know.  Our project, in case you're interested, is at www.urbansim.org.

Paul Waddell