|
|
| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
| |
| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | GISList: re: Linux RS and GIS software for the masses |
| Date: |
06/10/2002 07:58:37 AM |
| From: |
Dave McIlhagga |
|
|
Hi Ned,
The questions you raise are important ones that I feel need to be
thought about from a much broader perspective then the arguments I have
seen so far. I would love to take on many of Dimitri's arguments here,
but I think I'll spare the list a long debate that won't serve much
purpose. I'll just say that I find it interesting that Dimitri's
"obsolete technology" such as the University of Minnesota MapServer has
witnessed exponential growth in it's uptake over the past three years
and now is the engine behind many of the most sophisticated web mapping
applications I have seen. Within the next few months, MapServer will be
upgraded to support PDF output, and will be tightly integrated with
Flash technology providing the ability to develop fully interactive
mapping applications in a flash environment. Obsolete eh?
But more to the point, I'll try to address your questions in a couple of
ways:
1. How open source has been and will be evolving - in particular how it
pertains to GIS
2. Where does Open Source fit into today's GIS world
I think it's important to keep in mind just how new the concept of Open
Source technologies is. As much as we like to get caught up in the
"what's the latest fad" of the past months, or even few years, the
reality is that it takes a much longer perspective (over the course of
5, 10 or 20 years) to get a sense of something being a "fad" or a true
evolution in terms of a new philosophy or approach to technology. Open
Source has lingered around for many years, but I have personally
witnessed a big change in the past three or four years.
A lot of this has to do with adoption of Internet technologies.
Suddenly, where all development traditionally occurred in isolated
backrooms that had little contact with the rest of the world, now
Internet technologies allow 100s or even 1000s of developers, GIS
analysts, technical writers, graphic designers ... around the world to
be able to communicate and work together. This isn't a pipedream - this
is reality. Anybody who is unsure of this, take a look at the UMN
MapServer mailing list to see what a truly vibrant and integrated user &
developer community can be like.
Where was MapServer, Linux, PHP, PostGIS, Apache 10 years ago? It
didn't exist ... so in less than 10 years, open source technologies have
gone from near zero to enough propagation that we're even having this
discussion. That doesn't sound like a dead-end to me.
So that's the long term perspective, and we could spend a long time
debating whether this trend will continue to grow in the future - you
can guess where I stand on that one. But now for the more immediate ...
who can benefit today from Open Source GIS technologies and what are
they? I lump these into four groups:
First for the technologies, my personal favourites based on type:
Web mapping - UMN MapServer
Spatial Database - PostGIS with PostgreSQL
Desktop mapping - OpenEV and Grass (OpenEV is a bit newer, but still in
the early stages of it's development)
AND a Plethora of utilities - many of which have been integrated into
your favourite commercial GIS packages
User Groups that can benefit the most today:
1. Distributed Data environments
Many organizations have data residing in many different places, and in
many different formats. Fees for licensing software to handle this
scenario becomes very quickly, very prohibitive. Save your licensing
$$$, take on some of the robust base technologies from above, and spend
it on getting a contractor specializing in the technologies to implement
those custom features that you just can't get out of the box in the
commercial world. Our experience has been that this is cheaper in the
end AND you actually get the functionality you want, not what the vendor
happens to have available in the current release.
2. Widespread deployment of custom software
So you have a wide group of users who need to do Landuse Planning.
Geography is a central component of any tool they will be using, but
your users may not be sophisticated GIS users. That means you have to
give them something designed with THEIR specific needs in mind, not all
the other more general requirements from an off-the-shelf GIS. Spend
the money on developing those requirements instead of buying licenses of
more closed software that wasn't developed for your purposes. Economies
of scale can make this viable.
3. Organizations with strong in-house skills or acess to skilled
contractors
Why bang your head against the wall with black boxes that you're PAYING
for from a vendor who you have to pull his teeth out to get him to
listen when you've got the skills in-house or via contractors to a) fix
any problems you find in the software, b) add to the software as
required, c) make use of the software.
4. Need for a highly customized application
This applies in p
|
|
Sponsored by:
For information
regarding
advertising rates
Click Here!
|
