Open Source Geographic Information Systems 189
RGillig writes "The second MapServer Users Meeting and the first ever Open Source GIS Conference was held on June 9th to 11th in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The initial response from the Open Source GIS community is that the conference was a huge success. It was great to have people from private, government, academia, and communities all together discussing how Open Source GIS applies to their needs. Here is a presentation given by Paul Ramsey, Director, Refractions Research Inc. that outlines the current state-of-the-art for Open Source GIS, and includes links and information about all of the current software packages/efforts, etc."
It happened when? (Score:3, Interesting)
Texas Mesonet (Score:4, Interesting)
http://mesonet.tamu.edu/ [tamu.edu]
Click on Current Weather to see the MapServer-based map I helped create initially. It's all built with open-source software and (I think) freely available data from the national weather service. It's amazing how much data you get, and how easily it can be handled by one little machine in a windowless office somewhere (until it's slashdotted of course).
Its good, but not the complete picture (Score:5, Interesting)
Refractions Research = excellend support (Score:5, Interesting)
By 4:30 AM we had exchanged about 3 emails each way, fixed all the problems and had a great demo. If we land the client, we're hiring them.
It's out there. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Programmers' tools, not finished applications (Score:2, Interesting)
Geoda http://sal.agecon.uiuc.edu/geoda_main.php
STARS http://stars-py.sf.net
Choro http://choroware.sourceforge.net/
Re:doc file? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not exactly much of an endorsement for OSS if you use proprietary formats to distribute that endorsement.
I really wish people would stop pretending that simply because openoffice reads docs is some valid justification for using the format. For one, there is nothing you can put in a doc you can't put in an open format, and most of what is put in a doc should be put in an rtf or txt file.
For another, there is no guarantee MS won't change the doc format tomorrow, which is the entire point of NOT using their formats.
Re:We have plenty of 'free' data... (Score:1, Interesting)
It is ironic that in Canada, where GIS was pioneered, they charge what can be consitered outrageous amounts of money for high-quality data. The situation is similar in the UK.
The fight continues, although there are some here in Canada which understand the benefits of making the data freely available, for instance the City of Prince George [pg.bc.ca] is one that I know offhand.
Re:What about the rest of the world? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's in a simple binary matrix, easy enough to hack up something to import it whereever you want.
Re:Programmers' tools, not finished applications (Score:3, Interesting)
That's very interesting! I was wondering if you could give me some advice...?
This is the situatation: I'm looking at GIS now, as I need to expand my skills, and only solutions running on Linux will come under consideration. Furthermore, I wouldn't trust systems where I can't inspect the source code. It doesn't need to be free as in speech, but the source code must be available.
I've looked at GRASS, since it is in Debian. It segfaulted on me when I tried to load a data set, so I didn't get very far. It did indeed look rather hard to use, but since I am a long time UNIX user, and can do some hacking myself, perhaps it is for me anyway...? I'm also a long-time R user (I love that system), and the two are supposed to work well together.
So, what you're saying is that GRASS is a powerful system, but has a steep learning curve?
That's quite OK by me... But does it flatten some time? That is, is it designed so that when you've grokked the fundamentals, you can pretty much do anything?
I think what I'll do the most is to create topographic maps from DEMs. Then, I may do some tracings of LANDSAT or ASTER data, to add some rivers, glaciers and stuff like that. How hard would this be?
Re:We have plenty of 'free' data... (Score:2, Interesting)
The clearinghouse main page [state.ga.us]
Direct link to the data [state.ga.us]
There's also good imagery on the USGS site for free, but you have to use their viewer to view it (it's not downloadable...).
And as far as open-source GIS, has anyone here tried GeoTools? That's the most complete OSS GIS toolset I've seen.....
not a need for data, but a need for ACCESS to data (Score:4, Interesting)
I've triend to make an effort to show how to do this, but it gets frustrating! You can see what I did here at my Visualization Classes [schwehr.org]. I used to be a Arc/Info hardcore user, but got so frustrated I gave up. It's easier for a programmer to write their own than deal with all the cruft in Arc. However, it's great for creating funny war stories.
if open source could trump esri (Score:3, Interesting)
(not to say OSS GIS doesn't do certain things better than ESRI... let me explain)
If the OSS development community can build say, a viable online mapping platform that was open it would be huge!
I'm sick to death of the ESRI upgrade/maintance ladder/extortion to get product revisions that fix the bugs in the original release. I'm tired of the convoluted bandaid approach to online mapping.
I'd welcome a solid OSS solution any day, ideally beable to serve ESRI format
blah...
e.
Where's the GPS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not to burst anyone's bubble, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
homepage: (down?)
http://qgis.sourceforge.net
alt:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qgis/
Re:Where's the GPS? (Score:2, Interesting)