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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: [gislist] GIS software/hardware donations for 3rd World |
| Date: |
01/28/2005 09:40:02 AM |
| From: |
Anthony Quartararo |
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Excellent points Pat. ESRI (and others) supposed business partner programs
also fall into this category as well. ESRI's strategy, long ago, was to
seed the universities with "Arc-speak" at any cost [read: free or just about
free licenses] so that newly minted graduates would conclude that GIS = ESRI
["arc" for example, being a proprietary software command line used by ESRI
and not necessarily a universally accepted concept], but ask any graduate
today about what they know regarding GIS and a good number will start out by
saying, "We used ESRI.....". Great strategic vision, if nothing else. The
other vendors have not been nearly as successful in trying to push their
products down to the formative years of GIS/Geographic education, and so it
is true around the world. This is not 100% a bad thing, by any means, but,
it does conveniently lead to a natural dominance by ESRI in the global
market, one that they are loath to relinquish anytime soon. How many
clients have had their systems converted for "free" or "nearly free" if they
switch platforms ? Well, that is another vehicle for subsidization, because
migrating from Intergraph to ESRI is not cheap by any means. Anyway, I got
pummeled on this topic by a number of open source advocates, so I will
return to my cave now...
Anthony
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