GRASS Geographic Information System now under GPL

Spatialy Challenged writes "The GRASS Geographic Information System (originally developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers) is actively being developed and has now been released under the GPL. GRASS has a good core architecture, but is missing the interoperability and GUI features of commercial desktop GIS. I would sure like to see this software evolve into a KDE/Gnome GUI plus OpenGIS CORBA/SQL/COM interoperability. I'm sure it has the potential to blow the socks off of the big commercial names. "

Comments

Needs to be component-ized

[hey!]

From what I can see, most places that get GIS's end up either pouring tons of resources into them for doubtful return, or end up occaisionally playing with them, producing one or two interesting maps and then falling by the wayside.

The key I think to give the average user the ability to use spatial analysis is to develop custom built applications that support specific tasks and analyses. I'm doing that right now in the public health sector. The problem is the licesnsing is a bear. The vendors don't want it to be too easy to develop applications with GIS functionality because it affects there bread and butter business. One vendor requires you buy licenses in blocks of 40, for example.

The other thing that would be nice is if the government would start making the datasets we paid good tax money for available for reasonable fees. The fact that people take them and simply resell them at lower prices (which presumably is fair market price) means that the government's revenues are not maximized for these resources.

Shades of the French Senators story?

[timothy]

This story reminds me a little bit about the French senators who want computer programming done for France to be open sourced -- it demonstrates the value that can be salvaged from tax money that's already been spent.

Is there a good reason that it could not simply be a standard clause in the contracts surrounding comptuer programming done for any government agency that the result must be reusable, barring previous conflicting licensing terms? There are all sorts of other standards imposed on nearly every government contract, and this is one that might actually add some value.

Remember, the only way the government buys something is with money it's already taken from you for your benefit, or with money it promises it will take from you later. (Also for your benefit.)

cheers,

timothy