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Open Source GIS Conference Wrapup

Posted by timothy on from the couldn't-find-it-in-time-to-announce dept.

Wugger writes "The open source GIS community has been around for a long time, but has only been meeting regularly for the past three years. The most recent conference wrapped up on the weekend in Minneapolis. An excellent summary article and blog postings are available from Directions Magazine. Other attendees have also posted blogs and observations. The conference was attended by 300 people this year (up from 200 the previous year) and all the major open source GIS hackers were in attendance. In addition, some proprietary corporate players showed up to check out the scene: Autodesk, ERMapper, and ESRI, the Microsoft of the GIS industry."

2 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Harsh by theapodan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You whine and moan, but ESRI is on top for a reason, their features are useful, and the ones that they add that you malign for being buggy also are better than what the competition has generated.

    If you really want to feel the pain, try GRASS, especially for Cygwin, where its basically unusable.

    And for things that are difficult to do, ArcGIS 9 has much easier scripting with python than arcview did with AVENUE( arcview scripting) And the ancient arcinfo systems? Very painful to use.

    I hail the new features, they provide more benefit than the bugs could ever negate.

  2. ESRI the Microsoft of GIS? If Only! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft treats its developers and resellers well. ESRI exploits them. We once had a lead we worked into a pretty significant sale, but there was one item on the list that we didn't have a price for. So we called ESRI and found out that policy said that quotes that included the product had to come direct from ESRI. We were told that if we sent them the lead, we'd get a commision. So, later we follow up with the customer, and they have all their goodies. So we call the ESRI manager we'd talked to, and asked about our commission. He said that he changed his mind about it, because we hadn't really done enough work to justify a commission. Needless to say we never sent a lead to ESRI again.

    Their behavior is similar or even worse from the developer end of things. They literally say things like, "You have to understand that we'll be your business partner and your toughest competitor -- at the same time." Of course this is absurd. If you're smart, you'll realize this means you'll never make a significant profit on a product.

    Of course, in a way you have to expect this from any company. Microsoft does it too. The difference is Microsoft crushes its partners when they become strategic issues; ESRI does it for short term disadvantage. The sense I have is that their cut-throat culture is even more deeply rooted than Microsoft's. The people I know who work for MS are, by in large pretty happy. The people I know who work for ESRI always strike me as a bit nervous.