[Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion

[lbottorff@harveycounty.com]

Hello,

We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have
permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and
have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic
question is, can we use something like GRASS? Can we take the work we've done
and convert it to GRASS? Is GRASS "vector topology" based? Could be tie in, say,
Postgres for data manipulation? We cannot start over from scratch. We must be
able to convert what we have. If all of this were possible, what sort of client
tools would be available for users (all Windows) to interact with our maps?
We're a small rural county (Kreis) in Kansas USA and would like to avoid this
yearly ESRI tax.

L. Bottorff
Harvey County, Kansas
lbottorff at harveycounty.com