[Qgis-developer] QGIS vs gvSIG

[G. Allegri]

Turning the discussion to a "differences game" there should be a lot to say,
with pros and cons for both the softwares and communities.
>From my experience I would say that:

 - Qgis community processes are way much "open" then gvSIG. I think this
depends on the fact that gvSIG was born with a public funding that has been
won by a private agency (IVER company), and released as GPL. The result was
a fast, black-box development that haven't given the right wieght to the
community involvment. Many from the gvSIG community are aware that this has
to be solved now, and while the TSC is working on this, others has chosen to
fork it (fist as OADE and noe as CE)

 - gvSIG's (huge!) code base is changing quite rapidly, so some of its
important extensions, provided by private companies, are not aligned to the
latest release, and the next big refactoring (gvSIG 2.0) will need the
extensions interface to gvSIG to be almost completely refactored. QGis API
has reached much more stability, and this will help its maintance...

 - Two gvSIG pros: it's Java, so it's development is (from my point of view)
easier then C++ for many power users and developers. And it's
cross-platform. Ok, Java has its problems, we knoe, and it's under the
Oracle brand. But I'm not sure Qt would make me sleep more relaxed...
  The second pro is that some of its features respond very well to some
enterprise needs: Oracle Spatial works very fine, the Network extension
(which needs to be updated now to the latest gvSIG) brings very good
algorithms, the Sextante integration opens gvSIG to hundreds of processing
algorithms and let users write scripts and models in an easy way...

 - Two QGis pros: the user experience is "smoother" then gvSIG's. I feel the
UI more reactive and comfortable. The Python interface is powerful and
permit everyone to write its own plugin easily, even if data processing can
become unfeasible with big datas! But working at a lower level requires much
more skills then Java...

I think gvSIG commercial approach has lead to a bigger involvment of the
private companies, bringing to the development of enterprise ready features
(eg Oracle driver), so its approach is a double knife...
Qgis is much more closer to the users, but it seems it hasn't been able
(yet) to attract similar volumes of private companies in a virtuous process
of collaboration to develop some of the features that makes gvSIG more
acctractive for the enterprise level.

There should be a lot more to write, but I stop here.
I would like this "cross project" face to face discussion to continue. It
can be of help for both the communities ;)

giovanni



2011/6/23 Saber <razmjooeis at faunalia.co.uk>

> It now has turned into a gvsig mailing list :)
> From Qgis community's point of view, it will be great to absorb gvsig users
> and developers:
> Developers: qgis provides a more open approach to its development and its
> totally a community driven project.
> Users: qgis can potentially provide all the functions gvsig does. I have
> not used gvsig and can't say more about it.
>
> Paolo's email should be interpreted in ways qgis can be improved to replace
> gvsig.
> Both projects are free and open source but one is more! :)
>
> Cheers
> Saber
>
>
> jr.morreale at enoreth.net wrote:
>
> > Is this fork going to stay in sync with gvsig's trunk or is it going
> > its own seperate path ? I thought that after last year's talks about
> > differences between your OA edition and the official (but not public)
> > tree the situation would have improved.
> >
> > On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:21:25 +0100 (BST), Benjamin Ducke wrote:
> >> Hi Paolo (all) --
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >>
> >> [SNIP]
> >>
> >>> I didn't like their development model: AFAICT, there is a commercial
> >>> association of all gvsig devs; this has a strong potential for a
> >>> monopoly.
> >>
> >> That's precisely why a number of users and external developers,
> >> including myself, have now forked off the gvSIG Community Edition
> >> (CE).
> >>
> >> We are still in the process of building up the web infrastructure,
> >> but the mailing lists are already active and you can read up on
> >> progress in the list archives (the most active one is currently
> >> the "community" list):
> >>
> >>   http://sourceforge.net/projects/gvsigce/
> >>   http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=343517
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Ben
> >>
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> >>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
> >>
> >>
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