Slashgeo

I'd like your opinion on the different open source GIS projects. I'm looking for a GIS for our 50+ non-GIS-savvy scientists here. We use mainly use Debian. I quickly looked at GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, OSSIM and others. Some look great, but I can't decide which one to adopt! Here are our requirements: (a) easy enough to use for non-geospatial scientists, (b) able to read, convert and save most GIS/RS file formats, (c) allow basic data processing (e.g. reprojections, interpolations, data cropping, merging, cookie cutter, etc). For my personnal needs, I'd like the chosen GIS powerful and have a bright future. So far, I believe QGIS is my front runner. Am I doing a good choice?

Here's a part of the press release: Ann Hitchcock writes "[...] 52°North is an open initiative that strives to advance the development of cutting edge open source geospatial software. The initial focii of the open source technology development are Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), Web Security and Digital Rights Management (DRM). The members anticipate that other streams of work will open up according to community direction. [...]" You can read the full press release below. Now, can anyone tell me if there is a relation between this initiave and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation?

The import cartography blog asks, and get answers, about geospatial software open source licenses which allow commercial applications. From the blog: "I've made proprietary MapServer-based sites -- sites available to paying users, but no downloadable code or configuration -- and when they required enhancements or fixes of MapServer, I made the improvements and then gave them back (with consent of my customers) to the MapServer community. However, most of my MapServer contributions were made through my work on community, for-the-public software. The same goes for MapServer in general: most recent work on MapServer was (i'm digging up the stats on lines of code) done to implement OGC standards (WMS, WFS, WCS, SLD) for public-facing Canadian government web sites." This is an important issue since open source geosoftware is more and more important (one simply has to think of ESRI and Google's uses of GDAL/OGR, amongst many).

In a followup to his previous entry on open source licenses and commercial applications, the import cartography has a short but interesting entry on proprietary development contributions to geospatial open source projects. The two hypothesis from the blog: "Proprietary benefit for open source GIS software is primarily a phenomenon of the GDAL project. [...] Proprietary benefit for open source GIS software goes almost exclusively to low-level projects."

The OSGeo blog shares updates on their blog, first topic is the financial and fundraising issues, then recent membership elections and membership management and finally a reminder on the OSGeo Journal and the upcoming FOSS4G conference. From the first link: "We've never had any real commitment to revenue targets - how many donors, how much from grants, who is responsible for doing it all, etc. - so it is hard to show that we have a plan for meeting our budget expenditures. Autodesk is still committed to helping fund the start-up of OSGeo in the short term but to be truly sustainable we must augment that with additional funds. [...] I have spoken to several members who have grant-writing experience and I believe we have some great opportunities out there - especially for developing educational material and developing/delivering workshops across many domains." See also related stories below.

First, I'm happy to announce a new financial donation to help Slashgeo.org stay not too far below the red line, ThinkGeo.com (blog entry) is now amongst the Slashgeo.org top donors. Thank you! Donors have a link to them in the right side column.

Second, I admit I'm not entirely proud of Slashgeo's geonews coverage since the beginning of the year. As most of you already know, Slashgeo is ad-free and is ran only by voluntary contributions, mainly time given by a small team of geoenthusiasts to aggregate the most pertinent geonews out there for the geospatial community. For the last two years and a half, I've had a lot of precious help from other enthusiasts who joined the Slashgeo bandwagon as editors, but I still publish most of the stories on Slashgeo at the moment. Being a new father and away from my day job for a while, I have trouble finding the required time to adequately feed Slashgeo on a regular basis. Unless something unexpected happens and instead of being myself constantly worried, I ask you, our dear users, to allow a reduction of service for the coming months until about September. This does not mean Slashgeo will stop publishing, it just means we'll more than ever rely on user contributions and, even if efforts will be done to cover the most pertinent geonews, they may be published with a delay of a few days or more. Hopefully, Slashgeo should afterward go back to our more frequent and timely geonews publishing. Thank you for your comprehension. Alex aka Satri.

The Spatial Guru blog informs us about the coming release in March of the book titled "Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source" by Gary Sherman. The "About this book": "Desktop GIS explores the world of Open Source GIS software and provides a guide to navigate the many options available. Discover what kind of GIS user you are and lay the foundation to evaluate the options and decide what software is best for you. Desktop GIS examines the challenges associated with assembling and using an OSGIS toolkit. You’ll find strategies for choosing a platform, selecting the right tools, integration, managing change, and getting support. The survey of OSGIS desktop applications provides you with a quick introduction to the many packages available. You’ll see examples of both GUI (Graphical User Interface) and command line interfaces to give you a feel for what is available. Once you have a grasp of the OSGIS landscape, the book delves into a detailed look at the major desktop applications, including GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, spatial databases, GMT, and other command line tools. Finally, the book exposes you to scripting in the OSGIS world, using Python, shell, and other languages to perform GIS operations and create output." The other book mentioned on Spatial Guru is GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, already mentioned on Slashgeo in our Books section.

The Free Geography Tools website links to two tables comparing open source GIS software: "Desktop GIS means thereby that we did not inlcude map web server tools or basic GIS libraries. Please be aware that this listing is probably not comprehensive." Despite missing software, the tables are quite informative. There's a recent book on desktop open source GIS and a two-years old discussion. Slashgeo regularly cover open source desktop GIS software news.

Mateusz Loskot announced on his blog the release of GDAL 1.5.1. From his blog : "The March 20th, 2008 brought us new patch release of GDAL library. It doesn’t include any new features but a very tidy set of 65 bug fixes. Great Job GDAL Team!"

Head on over there for more information or the links to snag the new GDAL release.