[OSGeo-Discuss] Transition fromGMaps to Open Source

[strk]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 03:53:05PM -0500, Arnie Shore wrote:
> Folks, hello, and I wonder if anyone can share experiences doing such
> a transition.  (I've tried this question with the OpenLayers groups
> without response but it was suggested that this group might help.)
> 
> Background:  I've written a free, Open Source Computer-Aided Dispatch
> application targeted to the public safety community, notably ham radio
> groups who kick into gear during emergency/crisis conditions.  It
> relies on GMaps API and imagery currently.
> 
> But under emergency conditions which comprise the reasons for this
> community's existence, internet connectivity to Google  may not exist
> of course.  Accordingly, I'm planning a version of the app in which
> the tile sets and API are resident at a local server.  Hence my strong
> interest in open solutions.
> 
> I can't imagine I'm the only one here doing anything like that, so
> I'll appreciate hearing re experiences doing this, plus, especially,
> thoughts on the tile sets available.  Thanks, all.

Have you considered getting data from the Open Street Map [1] database ?
Freedom for geographical data is unfortunately behind the one for
geographical software, OSM is in my opinion the best attempt at making
this more balanced. It won't provide photos though, only vectorial data.
There are tools to import those data in a postgis database, for later
processing/georeferencing. There are also a few specialized renderers
which you could use to generate static tiles, if all you need is images.

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org


--strk; 

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