Slashdot Mirror

From an urban-planning geek's perspective, it's one of the coolest local sites I know of. But serving 300,000 a month with what I assume to be an intensive GIS application can't be cheap.

UMN Mapserver
+ GRASS GIS
+ FreeGIS tools

The equivalent ArcWeb system ain't cheap. Like several county employees' salaries uncheap.

I tried to look at their GIS site to see what they were using, and got this error:
(Firefox on Debian/G/Linux)

http://www.maricopa.gov/Assessor/Error.aspx?type =b rowser
"This site is best viewed when using Internet Explorer.
Your using: Netscape5"
[not proceeding]

.. I'm guessing they are not using Free software.

Bonus chuckle [non-county residents only]:
Spot the apostrophe disaster in the error message.

Is there a good place to go to find programs (.NET or Java) written to use JUMP's libraries? Preferably with MS Access, since I know my computer can create those pretty easily.

I will keep exploring your website, but I had never heard of you until today (though I've been curious).

Links to JUMP and others at freegis.org.

good source of information, but doesn't come with maps.

PS: I work for the people who run FreeGIS.

GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.

web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.

desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).

theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.

GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.

web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.

desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).

theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.

GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.

web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.

desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).

theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.

While there is a lot of "open source" map data out there, there aren't a whole lot of free tools that will help you use it.

The tools and data fall under the GIS heading. Check out these sites to get started:

• FreeGIS - A good index of available stuff.
• MapServer - A tool mainly targeted toward serving map data on the web, but I've used it to make one-off images.
• Data Catalog - I've downloaded free USGS topo maps here. The files are large and it takes some effort to know what you're looking for.

I've used these tools to build maps of GPS tracks on my website. A couple examples:

• Smoky Mountains Hike
• Swamp Kayak Trip
• River Kayak Trip

I've done most of these maps with a lot of manual labor...if anyone knows of open source/free ways to improve the process, I'd appreciate it!

it costs $US25.00 for just the software, $US45.00 if you include the manual (in German). So, this is not free as in "free beer"

Furthermore, all the software and data on the CD is also available for free (well actually for whatever the download costs you) on various web-sites, all of which are linked from the FreeGIS project.

Disclaimer: I work for Intevation, but this post only reflects my personal opinions.

It uses GRASS along with GMT, iGMT, gmap, mapserver, MapIt!, gpsman, etc... Basically appears to be a distribution of all the mapping/gps stuff and some data. You can go download everything seperately. You can't download thier ISO image.

An honest question: the CD contains geographic data (e.g. rivers, coastline, etc.) but I saw no mention in the article or web site of the availability of political data (e.g. streets, city, state, country, etc.) Is there a free (beer) source of this info that is EASILY integrated with this CD?

Also, an observation, though it's called "FreeGIS", according to the order form: http://freegis.org/order.en.html , it costs $US25.00 for just the software, $US45.00 if you include the manual (in German). So, this is not free as in "free beer".

>Really, I wish the GRASS project were moving faster (or moving at all).

>So if you want to open one of those, now standard file types, better be prepared to pony up some real cash.

>Really, I wish the GRASS project were moving faster (or moving at all).

>So if you want to open one of those, now standard file types, better be prepared to pony up some real cash.

>Really, I wish the GRASS project were moving faster (or moving at all).

>So if you want to open one of those, now standard file types, better be prepared to pony up some real cash.

Maybe old news for you, but this is the first I've heard of IPW (thanks for the link) and I try to keep an eye on these things. RS.org also hosts LIMP - Large Image Manipulation Project - which is not to be confused with LIMP - the Linux Montage Project. GRASS has already been mentioned, and there is also SPRING, TOPOG (almost but not quite Free Software) and OpenMap.

Another good place in addition to remotesensing.org to keep an eye on Libre RS/GIS software development and data is freegis.org.

Try the Map Server section at dmoz.org for a list o' links.

If you are a developer look at these OGDI specs, and this library for reading shape files which might work well with some of the toolkits listed at freegis.org.

You should also cross post this question to the GRASS (grasslist@baylor.edu) and Remotesensing.org (osrs@remotesensing.org) mailing lists.

cheers,

-matt