[postgis-users] A bit off topic, but FOSS GIS clients...

[dnrg]

--- Tim Sutton <tim at linfiniti.com> wrote:
> Hi (anonymous person :-)

Hi there Tim. Not anonymous. Though I do use several
email accounts to dodge spiced-ham-like missives. My
contributions to the FOSS GIS community have been
minimal so far, but I hope to improve.

With the help of others, I founded a small gathering
called OSG-SD (Open Source GIS San Diego) roundabout
ESRI's International Users Conference 2006 in San
Diego, held at SDSU. Seemed a waste not to leverage
all those geospatially-inclided minds in the same
place, at the same time. Perhaps we'll have another in
2008. Learned a great deal of interesting bits about
MapServer's history during OSG-SD and there was a lot
of excitement in the room about the possibilties of
FOSS GIS and present uses.

I also founded a spatial database users group named
NCSDUG in my home state of North Carolina (US). That
was primarily an ESRI-product-based event, but I will
try to incorporate FOSS GIS stuff in the next NCSDUG
event. We have a local OSGEO chapter, but I don't know
if it's presently active. The first NCSDUG was
well-attended (about 200 people). That's a small
contribution and I want to do more.

> Did you file a bug report and provide a test data
> set that replicates the issue?

I'm not authorized to redistribute the data. Are you
saying QGIS has no trouble processing and rendering
large shapefiles? Looking back, the shapefile was
nearly a gig. I'll try some datasets half that size
and see if I encounter the same difficulties. In
retrospect, expecting to work natively with a
shapefile of ~1G is probably ill-advised.

> Open source software places more responsibility on
> the user than commercial software - you are expected
> to contribute your experiences back in a meaningful
> way.

Only seems fair.

> >Seems QGIS is a decade or more behind even ArcView

My apologies for making a statement like that.
Hyperbole at best.

> 1.0 release yet). It seems a bit unreasonable to
> expect Desktop GIS to suddenly emerge "out of the
> ether" with full feature parity to commercial
> products or open source projects 

I applaud you in your efforts, and hope others join
you. The most I've intended when in my right mind is
that, great, efforts like yours should be applauded.
But wouldn't consolidation lead to better outcomes?
You address that below and I will respond.

> Desktop GIS projects, but QGIS is developed only on
> a volunteer basis with no full time programmers /
> commercial backing whatsoever.

I realize it ain't easy. But could consolidation
(future effort) make it easier?

What's Refractions' model? Paul? Presumably
Refractions is a for-profit entity and not an ESRI
Business Partner. Refractions seems to be quite
successful with PostGIS. PostGIS seems to be the de
facto FOSS spatial database extension, with PostgreSQL
being its host. Longer lead time, I know.

Does Refractions not implement the FOSS GIS products
they help develop for pay? Do they not, like Google
(although Google has endless capital), allow their
programmers to work, at least part-time, on FOSS GIS
products during work hours?

Also, wasn't there a FOSS4G presentation about
consulting as a way to further FOSS GIS development
and make a living at it as well?

Is there a QGIS foundation? If not, could there be?
Should there be?
 
> desktop GIS on linux, the only alternative was
> GRASS. It took me ages just to figure out how to
> create a mapset and import some shp data and
> display it. Now there are a number of tools that let
> me easily open and display GIS data in a pointy 

QGIS integration with GRASS is a brilliant idea. Kudos
to you and your team.

> Many, many users find QGIS quite useable for
> everyday browsing of shapfile data....

Glad to hear it, and glad to experiment further to see
if it's user-error on my part.
 
> There are many other FOSS desktop GIS clients - did
> you try *google* for this?

I tried the usual places, found more clients than I
expected, and that in part led to my frustration. The
proliferation of FOSS GIS clients.

> In my (completely unbiased)  opinion QGIS
> is the best but if you are a serious GIS user
> entering the FOSS GIS space, it would seem
> logical to me that you download the various efforts
> and try them out to form your own opinion about
> which is best for you...after all its
> free software so there is little to be lost in doing
> a decent survey of the available offerings....

Let's agree to disagree on the
sample-everything-because-it's-free approach. I
actually don't think it's reasonable to expect that
people will or should take that approach. It's
time-consuming for one.

Consider FOSS Office suites. There's OpenOffice. There
are others. There are no others I'm aware of that are
as widely used, or as good as, OpenOffice. I did not
want to try, nor did I need to try, a dozen
competitors. Google seems to be doing interesting
things with their office apps, but I want my data
stored locally.

OpenOffice is terrific and does everything I need it
to do that MS Office does. That's the sort of
consolidation I have in mind--not consolidation of
code per se (I realize there are technical reasons why
that's not feasible, as you've stated). Hadn't thought
as much about programmers' skill sets. That indeed is
a potential blockage.

I personally would love to see an aggregation of
complementary FOSS GIS products released together like
OpenOffice. Looks as though my wish will go
unfulfilled. QGIS could be the client of choice in a
release like that.
 
> Imagine the time that would be lost if there was a
> single effort towards desktop GIS and the project
> failed (through poor design, language deprecation 
> etc). It would be a giant set back as its
> replacement started from scratch to replicate and
> surpass those features.

I understand that. Perhaps 2, but not 8+, is optimal.
Who knows. I think I get it but remain, presently,
unconvinced.

Is there as much concern about the future of
OpenOffice, it being some sort of a monolith? Surely
OpenOffice has something to teach us. Tim, do you use
OpenOffice? If so, why? And how many others did you
try first?

> Ah the 'Im not a developer and therefore its ok to
> stand by the sidelines and bemoan my fate argument'.

Nice try, no cigar. :-) It's more an "argument" of,
hmmm, not having any luck processing large shapefiles.
Wonder if it might be user error on my part--or not.
And yeah, some superfluous venting and carrying on.

> Actually non developers have a
> lot to offer open source projects that can take the
> load off developers backs - for example in QGIS I

I just discovered CamStudio, seen what you're doing
with screencasting, and am excited as heck about it.
I've been using CamStudio recently to help capture
real-some some performance metrics for a closed-source
GIS product to play back later and assist with
report-writing. I see great educational possibilties
in the screencasting space.

Great to be able to produce ones' own CBTs; especially
when a lot of what should be taught in University
Geography programs, e.g. FOSS GIS, typically isn't...

> If you really want to do something to help get
> involved and do something - most projects dont care

I've had luck so far as an event organizer. I'll
consider the documentation path.

> Actually (speaking for QGIS) we are really open to
> working with other projects where it makes sense.
> Just look under the hood - we use
> GDAL/OGR for data access, GEOS for geometry

I agree. Sorry not to mention all the things are
absolutely right on about QGIS.

> ... this I addressed above too I believe.... want to
> really help?
> Sponsor me (or others like) to work on QGIS / uDig
> etc full time so we
> dont have to waste all our precious hacking time on
> these pesky day
> jobs....

What day jobs, precisely, do the fine folks at
Refractions.net have? Could you adopt their model?
Would you wish to if you could?

> As a final note I would say that the general tone of
> your email is rather bleak

It's always darkest before the dawn as the old saw
goes. And to crib another, I hope this discussion has
generated some light if not all heat.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my ramblings.

> but in fact there are many many users
> who are happily
> and productively using QGIS, uDig etc for day to day
> work. I
> appreciate that the software out their may not meet
> all your needs
> yet, but for Joe Bloggs in darkest Peru at least
> there is *something*
> out there for doing basic Desktop GIS without
> needing to spend 5 years
> salary on an ESRI license....
> 
> Have fun!

Roger that. :-)

Dana





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