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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."

6 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Low Attendance? by ndansmith · · Score: 3, Funny
    The conference was attended by 300 people this year (up from 200 the previous year).

    400 people were registered, but the missing 100 people were not able to locate the convention center thanks to faulty map software.

  2. Harsh by IchBinEinPenguin · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... the Microsoft of the GIS industry

    That's like saying "these guys club baby penguins to death", especially on /.

    1. Re:Harsh by facelessnumber · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well... It is a good analogy though. They're the biggest, most widely-adopted vendor of GIS software, they're all about vendor lock-in, they adore the "upgrade treadmill" (Anyone ever use ArcInfo 8.x? How long?) and their software is not just buggy, but buggy in a very special way with its nearly unique capacity to infuriate the user, perhaps dare I say, even surpassing that of Microsoft. At least Microsoft's horrorshow improves with each new release. ESRI's just gets different. Features come before bugfixes. Service packs break things. And such conspicuous placement of duct tape. In some ways they're even worse than Microsoft. Their 16-bit ten year old hack ArcView 3.x is still in heavy use because there are things it can do that either can't be done in Arc8/9 or the UI has changed so radically that people just don't know how. And don't mistake that statement to mean that Arc3 is any less buggy, just that it can be more functional. Imagine WinXP, 2000, and 9x all sucking so badly that you had to dual-boot into Windows 3.1 to get any work done.

      That is why ESRI sucks.

      -An ESRI user.

    2. 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.

  3. Summary fails to mention primary open source GIS. by theapodan · · Score: 3, Informative

    GRASS http://grass.itc.it/ is the primary open source GIS solution. The summary could have at least mentioned it in passing.

    Odd that they mention AutoDesk too, considering their mapping software doesn't feature as nice spatial analysis stuff as ArcGIS does, although I haven't used it enough to make any other conclusions about it.

    Now if GRASS would only improve their text interface and revamp their GUI.

    Another critical open source GIS application for webmaps is MapServer http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/

    I've found that doing the data analysis with ArcGIS and displaying it with mapserver is the only way to go. ArcIMS is a bit too complex, at least compared to mapserver.

  4. 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.