[Freegis-list] gis meeting

[Arnulf Christl]

Steven Bowden wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 June 2005 04:22, Daniel Calvelo Aros wrote:
> 
>>there is no commmercial major GIS for linux;
> 
> 
> There is GenaMap produced by GenaWare http://www.genaware.com/
> We have been running it on Linux for about 4 years now. Prior to that we have  
> run it on DEC Alpha and HPUX.
> 
> As far as I know they are the only commercial GIS that actively supports the 
> use of some open source tools, ie linux and Postgersql.  As far as I know 
> none of the other major GIS players actively support Postgresql as a db 
> backend.
> 
> Regards
> Steve

In the realm of spatial data infrastructures support and use of Free 
Software by proprietary producers is a lot more common than in the 
traditional GIS context.

i have heard of rumors that ESRI SDE will support PostGIS in one of the 
next versions. Should be difficult not to as it supports all relevant 
OGC standards.
:-)

The German GIS vendor ibR also "promised" to support PostGIS, but i did 
not see it in cold print yet.

Further off the Free Software concept (this is not new) people talk 
about Oracle "being" Open Source because it runs on Linux.
Proprietay vendors already make heavy use of Free Software, especially 
operating systems (GNU/Linux) and web servers (Apache) though no GIS as 
yet.

Somewhat belated but maybe still of interest:
The attitude of proprietary vendors regarding Open Source GIS 
(components) have been verbalized by Intergraph, ESRI, Autodesk, Oracle, 
GE Smallworld and c-plan in a press conference in Munich 2004/07/20. A 
report including some statements can be found here: (German language):
http://www.rtg.bv.tum.de/index.php/article/view/387
http://www.rtg.bv.tum.de/index.php/article/view/388

The expert group was supposed to shed light on the terms Open, Open 
Source, Open GIS (former OGC; now Open Geospatial) and Open Software 
(whatever that might be). They refused to use the term Free Software 
because "we want to reach broad interest and nobody would understand 
what is meant by Free Software. Open Source is better known".
Well!?

my short personal interpretation (not a translation!):

The main question was whether proprieatary GIS vendors (they said 
commercial but meant proprietary) fear reduced turnover.

UMN MapServer, GeoServer, PostGIS, deegree, PROJ4, OGR and so on were 
easily identified as not fulfilling traditional GIS design parameters 
and thus to be incomparable. The only complete Open Source GIS that is 
comparable to traditional proprietary products was thus identified to be 
  GRASS.

Winzenhöller (Autodesk) said that the commercial success of Autodesk is 
measured by generated revenue, not by providing Open Source software.
The GIS market itself is a minor market for Autodesk. Open Source 
components make up an even lesser share, therefore it is not important 
for Autodesks revenue.
Interesting: If users ever would request Open Source (which they did not 
until that day) Autodesk would provide it!

Markus (c-plan; then a swiss based reseller of Autodesk software and 
producer of TOPOBASE, a spatial and GIS extension for Oracle) said that 
they already ship some OS components if requested by users. The mayor 
point of criticism was that all "Open Source licenses" supposedly still 
were legally arguable.

btw: c-plan has been bought by Autodesk a few weeks ago.

Alisch (Intergraph) repeated the will to cooperate with the Open Source 
community as soon as all open legal issues are clarified.
i do not remember which legal issues he meant and the report does not 
state either. But i do remember that they said that they recognize Open 
Source GIS components as a challenge and will scrutinize possibilities 
of how to integrate the OS software and communities (does that mean 
devour?).

Buziek (ESRI Germany) stated that the mosst important issue really is 
the geo data and therefore should be the center of discussion. Not a 
word about their own plans, fears, or anything.
Our suggestion that ESRI will have to Free its software in order to stay 
market leader produced a "maybe sometime" and a weak smile.
:-)

Schlageter (GE Smallworld) supports the idea to integrate Open Source - 
but only after all legal questions have been resolved.

Seiwerth (Oracle) pronounced the importance of Open Source regarding 
Linux as an operating system for Oracle databases. To compete with 
PotgreSQL/PostGIS Oracle will simply always have to be better.

Most interestingly one mayor point of criticism by all proprietary 
vendors was that development of Open Source GIS software supposedly is 
developer centric and not user centric like it should be.

My feeling was that the GIS industry in the US has not yet recongized 
the full potential of Free Software which causes problems for the 
marketing strategies in Europe. Maybe perception is already slowly 
changing.

Best,