[Freegis-list] Free Gis CDROM - Morphix

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hello Sajith,

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 02:21:38PM +0000, Sajith VK wrote:
> 	I am sajith vk, from India. We are working to 
> make a free Gis users group here and work is in progress.
> When we shown the power of available free Gis softwares
> (GRASS, thuban, mapserver etc), several persons (and even
> institutes) are interested.

Thanks for helping to spread the word!
It is highly appreciated.  
We need to get Free GIS Software into the public.

> 	We tried to distribute the freegis CDROM. Its good
> for demonstration, but AFAIK, harddisk installation is very hard.

It was meant to be a special subject distribution 
for people already having a running GNU/Linux system.

> So we created one based on morphix. It now contains GRASS, thuban,
> mapserver etc. Being morphix based, hardisk installation is simple,
> so one who installs GNU/Linux from this CD is getting a good
> Gis workstation!.

This is a good idea. 

Note that there might be a few drawbacks:

Morphix - just as knoppix - is likely to contain non-free software.
For a while Intevation started an initiative to put freedom
back on knoppix again. Something we call "Freie Software Knoppix".
Check the HTML in
http://intevation.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs-misc.cgi/freie_software_knoppix/

If you give out a live CD, you basically need to have the source
for it ready on request. At least for the parts that are under the GNU GPL.
This became a stumbling block when we wanted to create such a CD.
In order to be able to distribute it, Intevation would need to produce
the source CDs for it right away. 

Harddisk installation of knoppix usually leaves you with a Debian
GNU/Linux system which is in a non-upgradable status.
Thus those users will make a bad experiences with Debian
if they try to maintain that installation over time.
So installation as a real system on disk is easy but has those drawbacks.

A third thing is the data. We made a demo version of a Free GIS CD
called taran, but lacked data like a scanned background basemap,
DEM, vector information and an airial photo for the same area 
to actually being able to demonstrate the software.

> 	Do anybody know a place where we can host our CD?

So far we also did not find a place to host CDs of the 
Freie Software Knoppix.

> I also wish to contribute to freegis.org's freegis CD instead of
> working for a seperate one (To avoid duplication of work).

We certainly should join forces on this one.
I believe https://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/team
could be a place to discuss this in details.
The GAV (German Grass User Association) probably is also intested
in this. They over time started to try to collect a few complete
data sets for those purposes.

	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  

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