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

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 08:57:25PM +0100, Holger Zebner wrote:
> But when we recommend the dev. coutries to use free software we should 
> remember that support and updates needed come from the net. But can the 
> access the net all the time or can they afford this? In my opinion, the GUI 
> needs to be developped a lot more. Consider that you may be working  with 
> people who have used the computer just for some years; so the thing should 
> be, as early mentioned, intuative in it's use.

About access to Free Software:
The freedom to copy software really helps in the development countries.
Bringing a CD or something else down there is not that big of the problem.
Many universities do have reasonable internet access, too.

To the GUI remark:
Some command line interface are easier to learn and have lower
computing power requirements, both is also an advantage in this regard.

> I am a student in Geography. In our department we get taught all GIS 
> knowledge on ESRI (ArcView, ArcMap). there're like telling us that it is 
> the only system existing which is quite true when one takes a look at the 
> spreading of ESRI. The whole university uses it even though it has known 
> problems: the code and programming code (Avenue) is proprietary, it crashes 
> often and isn't very comfortable to use. But still they don't think of 
> something different than buying the latest licence. Don't they see that 
> they have the power of a new generation sitting in their halls.

Ask them unfortable questions. Ask the student representatives.
Organise presentations of alternative software with fellow students.
It will help to grow your all knowledge about GIS 
thus it adds to your education.

> I'd like start exploring the free GIS software world but it isn't useful at 
> the moment since I will have to present the results in Arc.

Some results done with Free Software can be presented with
proprietary software. I think it is majorly sad that the university
promotes one special vendor. In some of my GIS courses in 1999 I
demanded that I wanted to use a different software and was allowed doing so.

> I once istalled GRASS 5.0 but simlpy capitulated. It seemed to be suitable 
> for specialists performing a raster image research. I think it is not 
> really good just some small database-vector-image work like joining or 
> intersecting imgaes...

Have you had a look in the FreeGIS tutorial?
It is in Germany done by a Heiko Kehlenbrink a student.
	http://www.freegis.org/freegis_tutorial/index.en.html
We hope to improve that so that students can lean to use Free GIS.

Bernhard

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