[GRASS-user] Help in Defending FOSS SDI

[Benjamin Ducke]

Hi Ravi,

sorry about the late reply, but maybe some of the presentations
and reports we have on the OA Digital website will provide
some useful material/arguments for you:

 http://www.oadigital.net/research

Current GIS software, proprietary or open source, has so much
functionality that you can always make one or the other look
like the "winner", depending what application area you focus on.

At OA Digital, we have tried to focus on arguing three strong
points that open source solutions have, no matter what the
particular features may be:

1. Economic suistanability: licensing fees have no merits
for the customer past their expiration date. Once that is
reached, all former investment is automatically invalidated.
On the other hand, investing into open source development
and staff skills instead of licenses has long-term merits
and is suistanable.

2. Modular functionality: it's all there. If not in one 
package than via a combination of several. If something is 
still missing: hire a programmer to add it. It's also really
easy to build automatic, very efficient data processing
workflows from small open source components using scripts
etc.

3. Interoperability: it's really easy to exchange
data among open source applications, because they
respect open standards and don't drop older file
formats just to force customers to upgrade.
By contrast, proprietary applications just try to lock
you into them by using undisclosed file formate (so
called "vendor lock-in"). This is one of the most
important points, because the future of GIS is in
spatial data infrastructures (SDI), where the data
is at the centre of all planning and management and
the GIS applications become more and more interchangeable.

Hope this will provide some support arguing your points
for open source software.

You have to realize that the big GIS vendor (let's not
kid ourselves: there really is just one and they have
a suffocating monopoly on the market) will have about
1000 x the resources to put into marketing, brochures,
shiny packages, lobbying and high-ranking political
connections.

So this is always an uphill struggle, no matter how
clear the open source advantages are to the informed
mind.

Good luck!

Ben



On 08/02/2010 12:31 AM, Ravi wrote:
> Some so called SDI experts feel that FOSS SDI cannot perform at-par with
> Proprietary SDI.
> Please provide examples to fight a case from an Indian state which swears by Free and Open Source Software. We can never expect a better level playing field.
>
> Kerala - India
>
> Here are some excerpts from a document that has false claims supporting Proprietary Software.
>
> However, it is worthwhile to mention here that the OSS (Open Source Software) does not match the advanced functionalities of many of the commercial (proprietory) software that is in the market. Image processing and analysis capabilities of the open source software is not comparable to the commercial software when one require to carry out advanced data manipulations, image fusion, 3D modeling, ortho-correction, auto-georeferencing, stereo-image/air photo interpretation (PROBABLY REFERRING TO GRASS), advanced geospatial analysis etc., In such cases, certain proprietary software become an integral part of the Spatial Data Infrastructures, which can not be avoided. At a later stage the some of the proprietary software need to be purchased.
>
> It is a well known fact that web portal that run with OSS are neither OGC-compliant nor
> interoperable(PostGIS and Webservers to react). At the present juncture it is only possible to establish the KSDI Geoportal
> with the available COTS enterprise software.
>
> The detailed PDF document will be emailed on demand.
>
> This is a case that has the potential to set trends in India. Hope to have a good discussion such that we can sum it up and present at a meeting being conducted on August 11th 2010, to settle the issue.
>
>
> Ravi Kumar
>
>
>
>
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