[UW-GIS-L] Open Source GIS

[Paul Waddell]

I certainly would not advise taking away ESRI products to force users to
switch.  You'll have mass mutiny on your hands!  Creating options that
give people viable choices seems like a more prudent approach, if less
effective.

Paul

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Paul English wrote:

>
>
> > 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.
>
> I am familiar with MySQL, but not with the others. Do either of them
> provide a reasonable replacement for ESRI tools? My particular interest is
> arcinfo/arcview.
>
> I'm not a user of these tools, but a system admin and it is an endless
> source of frustration for me that ESRI tools are not available for Linux
> or FreeBSD, since *ALL* of our other tools are.
>
> I have installed GRASS (http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/) and tried
> encouraging people to use it, but I think taht unless I take away what
> they are used to, they will probably not switch since they would then have
> to learn a whole new package. I also don't know if GRASS can do what
> arcinfo/arcview does for them.
>
> > 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.
>
> I have an interest for sure.
>
> Paul
>
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