[Freegis-list] Re: GIS grant to help map cities worldwide

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

[ crossposing FreeGIS and EGIP Mailing List ]

This is actually yet another action to make the third world
be dependent on the first world technologies.

The best way to help developing countries getting into a better
position is to establish independent technolgies for their matters.
Free Software is the best available answer for the IT sector.

Thus, real support for developing countries in order to gain mid- and
long-term improvement of their situation means to educate them in
using Free Software, here Free GIS Software.
The current tools might need to be adapted which certainly will
consume some time and money, but nonetheless I don't regard it a good idea to
sacrifice the mid- and long-term advantages for a quick solution.


On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:29:43PM +0100, Roger Longhorn wrote:
> The United Nations has been given $15m to help it tackle poverty and the 
> spread of cities.
> 
> The grant will provide geographic information systems software to urban 
> planners, and train them in its use.
> 
> The money is to be shared among 1,000 cities in the developing world and 
> comes from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), a US 
> company.
>...

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

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