[GRASSLIST:182] Re: Considering replacing ESRI

[John Doucette]

If you have a genuine linux/unix/C++ genuis in your shop you probably don't
need to read further.

If you don't -  I would say the number one reason to stick with ESRI (or
Mapinfo ...) is that Grass is just too damn hard to set up and learn.

First let me say that I love the idea of open-source.  And that I am not
giving up on getting Grass going for me.

Watch this group for a while and see how large of a proportion of the
messages are pleas for help installing Grass.  Contrast that to setting up
ArcView ...

I don't understand why computer programs are written the way they are today.
Back in the DOS days programmers designed their own drivers for monitors and
printers ...  Then along came Windows with every program sharing dll's and
other program librarys.  F&%k program librarys.  I can still run my old DOS
programs by by copying a directory of files onto a new machine, erasing the
read-only attribute, and firing off the progams.  This is because the
programs are complete in themselves and do not require shared files or
program libraries.  Sharing is nice to teach to school childern but sucks in
the program world.  Linux is just as bad as Windows, and maybe worse, when
it comes to share file dependancies.  Trying to trace out these dependancies
and to understand them requires a major commitment of time.  This is
ridiculous to me in that shared librarys might have made sense when hard
drive space was limited but with the multi-gigabite drives today it would
not be an issue at all to let each program use as much space as necessary to
be complete in unto itself.

I do not have a guru to help me but I thought I could get along with a
little perserverence since I have been spending hours each day figuring out
computers stuff since my first Commodore 64 in 1982.  Well it has been a
long struggle and after a year and a half I can do some stuff in Grass.  But
if I would have spent the same amount of time learning more about ESRI's
products or MapInfo, I sure would have been much further along.

I ordered the CD version of Grass because I thought I could avoid time
downloading and maybe make installation easier.  Well the installation I
have done to date has not been easy, has required much time searching the
web for help, and pouring through Linux manuals and the poorly written man
pages that are really good at listing command options but uniformly fail to
give examples of how to use the commands and options, and chasing down
dependancies, setting up symbolic links, and decyphering archane error
messages.

As I said at the beginning - If you have access to very highly qualified
computer support personnel, and in addition if you can find someone to teach
your people how to use Grass - then no worries.  But if you don't have these
things your people will be turning out null product for a very long time
before proficiency sets in.

{-:  And as I said I love the idea of open source :-}

John