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OSGeo Foundation Up In Arms Over ESRI LAS Lock-In Plans

Posted by timothy on from the now-it's-ours dept.

Bismillah writes: The Open Source Geospatial Foundation is outraged over mapping giant ESRI's latest move which entails vendor lock-in for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data through its proprietary Optimised LAS format. ESRI is the dominant company in the geospatial data arena, with its ArcGIS mapping platform boasting with over a million users and 350,000 customers.

4 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Their software cost an arm and both legs yet... by Drakker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not surprised with this. GIS is almost a mono-culture that has been dominated by ESRI since forever. Their software costs in the thousands, yet crashes all the time and a lot of the included tools just don't work. Some parts of the interface have not changed since the 90s and they keep building on this dysfunctional foundation. Working with ArcGIS is a pain in the rear, yet for a lot of what ESRI software does, there is no alternative. Whenever I can I code my own stuff (using GDAL http://www.gdal.org/) and do all I can in QGIS (http://www.qgis.org/), but for a lot of tasks, you are stuck with ArcGIS and other ESRI tools. The market is more than ready for a new player that will make reliable software (whether commercial or open source, doesn't matter to most as they are used to pay through the roof for ESRI software anyway).

    1. Re:Their software cost an arm and both legs yet... by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't forget training and consulting. That brings in quite a bit of revenue too. In my experience most ArcGIS installations aren't actually functional because they don't have people who can work the software. Even after training most installations don't have the personnel to dedicate to keep up with it; they maybe produce a report or two, and then the software sits on the shelf, then they need to send someone else to training.

      In this environment a lot of people using ArcGIS might as well be using QGIS. If there were training and support for QGIS, this would build a user base which would attract developers. I think a lot more could be done in getting users to adopt web based mapping -- WMS and WMF -- too. The web is such moving platform that the kind of desktop based entrenchment ArcGIS enjoys is less significant.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Their software cost an arm and both legs yet... by nava68 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, but as soon as the Market leader does propagate a new data exchange format, the actual creators of the data (commercial companies as well as state agencies) will follow. ESRIs market share is dominating and unfortunately many GIS users are not interested in open tools. So if a more efficient and comfortable format will be available then the GIS community will willingly accept it - without even considering the problems of a further lock in. In addition to that, the Open Source Geo community is already providing the LASzip format for the same functionality and that format is far superior to the classic one and probably as efficient as the one ESRI is developing - plus it is open, documented and all, albeit so far not subjected to the process of standardization.

    3. Re:Their software cost an arm and both legs yet... by Urban+Nightmare · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I work for a Government Agency that uses ArcGIS for that last 10 or so years. Personally I'm a Linux user and try to use and contribute to open source projects (although lately I haven't been able to). I also use QGIS but find it's not always what I want when it comes to the cartography part of GIS. The maps it produces never seem to be as nice as ArcGIS. Sorry got a little off topic here. What I'm saying is that even though I like and use open source, my bosses don't give a rats ass about it. If you even mention no licensing fees then they think its an inferior product. They have drank the kool-aid, so we pay tens of thousands for licensing of all kinds of products that have the same or better open source alternatives.

      I believe this is also how many other agency view things. They don't care about open source. They just want someone to SELL them what they need.