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Re: [LUG] GIS and Linux, a political point



On Monday 08 July 2002 12:38 pm, Adrian Midgley wrote:
GIS are an area where OSS has high credibility, although as usual
the initial ease of use makes it easy to sell proprietary creeks up
which organisations can be induced to sail.

As far as I am aware the only fully featured OSS GIS software out there 
is GRASS http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/  which, as primarily a 
raster GIS, is not particularly suited to the realms of socioeconomic 
data.  There are however a lot of tools and smaller applications in 
various states of development which could be woven together to meet 
many requirements.  http://www.freegis.org/index.en.html

<gripe> Personally I find data a bigger problem than software.  Your 
average map savvy subject of the Queen (don't call me a citizen until 
I am one!) wanting to to use their home computer to do a little 
geospatial analysis of their local area will find themselves 
distinctly short of good data unless they have very deep pockets. So I 
guess that Plymouth's initiative should be applauded, although I 
should imagine the data will have had a "spin" put on it before it is 
allowed out of the system  </gripe>



http://www.usgs.gov/research/gis/title.html

By the time adverts are put out hte software has often been
selected, but if a research process is underway then a word with
anyone's local councillor, backed up by some details, might save the
rate-payers some money and future turbulence.

I could have a word with my friendly local councillor next time I see 
him in the pub, If I can get there early enough to catch him sober :)

Tony

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