[OSGeo-Discuss] Can I do the same GIS tasks with OS (as with ESRI)?

[Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas]

2008/4/26 Saka Royban <srph124 at yahoo.com>:
>
> ٍExcellent discussion.
> I have been an ArcGIS user and now i am transferring to OS.
> in my opinion, the best point of ArcGIS is that you everything in 1 package
> => simplifying tasks
> about OS, at least i see no difference in Web-GIS domain. OS softwares like
> UMN mapserver and Mapguide OS sometimes work better.
> in the field of Desktop GIS, although QGIS, GRASS,Sharpmap and other tools
> are available but in a diverse manner.
> the main problem is that the most powerful OS sotfware (GRASS) in this area
> is under Linux not windows (=> developing desktop GIS tools sounds very
> difficult). As announced by GRASS dev group, this problem is gonna solve
> soon.
>
> ===> OS GIS support most of expected needs from GIS, but sometimes with
> consuming more time.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Malte Halbey-Martin <malte at geog.fu-berlin.de>
> To: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2008 11:56:26 AM
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Can I do the same GIS tasks with OS (as with
> ESRI)?
>
>  Hi,
>
> IMHO the most barrier for people using OS GIS is the lack of a user
> friendly interface, especially for map production and digitising. I know
> that this has been stated before in this thread, but I want stress this
> point out.
>
> I'm working as as supporter and software trainer for a software company
> and not few of our customers are paying much money for applications,
> which simplifys/extend the common ArcGIS funcitonallity! Most people are
> overstrained about the functionallity of GIS software. I think the users
> of GIS have changed over the past decade. More common people have to
> work with GIS (especially public servants). GIS has become a common
> software tool so the users aren't only specialist as some years ago!
> This "new" users just want to have a button and that's it. Don't ask
> them to create a sql string for extracting some data out of a database.
>
> So as already mentioned, OS GIS NEEDS as userfriendly Interface,
> powerful digitizing and map production tools which are easy to use. When
> these issues have been solved, we will see a strong rising spread of  OS
> GIS software.
>
> Just my opinion.
> Malte
> PS: I love OS Software, but I just want to see a rising distribution of it!
>
>

Hi

I'm enjoying a lot with that thread as always  a Free/Privative
comparison appears.

But I'm quite  surprised because it seems that privative geosoftware
is only ESRI, what about Geomedia, ERDAS, ERMapper, Smallworld... for
instance

IMHO, free desktop GIS is not so far from privative solutions. With
nice projects like QGis/GRASS or gvSIG I think we are not far from
having almost all the funcitonality any user could need for
collecting, analise and output.

Creating nice paper outputs for me it's really important (and current
user-friendly tools are far from producing acceptable maps) but maybe
there are other outputs like SVG, KML or map server configuration
files that are really important as the Internet is there and almost
all of use use more web maps rather than paper maps.

For me, one of the most worrying lacks in FOSS4G is an ArcSDE
alternative because at this time there is not way for concurrence
corporative database editing. GeoServer project sees that as a
long-term project in their roadmap[2][3] but if we want a powerful
web-distributed editing we need it right now.

Regards

[1]http://www.sigte.udg.es/jornadassiglibre/uploads/file/Presentaciones/20.ppt
[2]http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap
[3]http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Open+Source+ArcSDE
-- 
Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
Ingeniero en Geodesia y Cartografía
http://www.geomaticblog.net
http://www.prodevelop.es