[GRASSLIST:3437] Re: GRASS as educational tool? (was: Just another stupid question from a paranoid education fun!)

[Eric G. Miller]

On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 12:27:26PM +0200, Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> > ESRI provides excellent
> > set of tools, but a single copy - ready to use workstation with ArcGIS
> > license is priced at around 12.000$ US.  The question is how many
> > university graduate students can buy it to start doing some simple
> > consultancy or independent research work. Not too many I guess.
> 
> That is only one drawback of proprietory software.
> Another is that they will not have access to the underlying
> technology if they are interested and that they cannot adapt
> the tools and share them. 

Well, ESRI does make it possible to do quite a bit with their underlying
technology (including extending it).  Of course, you generally can't
just tweak their underlying code.  ESRI does utilize quite a bit of free
software (some GNU functions, Apache, Tomcat, gs-aladdin [not quite
free, I expect], and probably others as well).  I think they will gladly
work with customers who express a desire to tweak some functioning, with
NDA's required, I'm sure.  Though, you can use their public programming
interfaces without such encumberances.

But, the price is pretty prohibitive unless you've got a business
pulling in significant dough (or you're the government).

-- 
Eric G. Miller <egm2 at jps.net>