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An Overview of Free & Open Source Desktop GIS (FOS-GIS) |
| Below you can find links to two tables that should give an overview of free Desktop GIS and projects. Desktop GIS means thereby that we did not inlcude map web server tools or basic GIS libraries. Please be aware that this listing is probably not comprehensive. | |||
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OS Desktop GIS - general overview table | ||
html |
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word-doc |
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OS Desktop GIS - functionality table | ||
hmtl |
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word-doc |
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GIS software that does not qualify for the tables above | ||
html |
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| The
tables can be altered on request. Please write to
sstein[-at-]geo.uzh.ch - and preferably add the tables with your changes (use for instance word doc + track changes mode) |
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| We also wrote an article that provides some more information on the desktop GIS projects and additionally contains an introduction on open source licenses and FOSGIS organizations. | |||
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(this is a revised version from Sept. 2008; final 2009 version doi:
XXX) |
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Notes
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| Other FOS-GIS related comparisons: |
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| . Atle Frenvik Sveen wrote a n
interesting thesis on how to evaluate and select a FOS (desktop) GIS
for companies/projects called: "Use of Free and Open
Source GIS in Commercial Firms" (it's from Dec. 2008) |
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. I came
across this
thesis by
Todd R. Buchanan (2005) that compares the desktop GIS GRASS 6.0 and
ArcGIS 9.0 |
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| . The Boston
GIS Blog compared the following database systems SQL Server 2008
Spatial, PostgreSQL/PostGIS 1.3-1.4 and MySQL 5-6 (in May 2008) |
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| Websites with listings of free GIS software (projects): | |||
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www.freegis.org | ||
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www.opensourcegis.org | ||
| Related |
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If you ever wanted to know what
the OpenStreetMap project
is, then I recommend to watch this video presentation by Richard Weait. |
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| Acknowledgments: I have to thank numerous people of the different projects for contributing information: GRASS & QGIS: Markus Neteler, Otto Dassau, Marco Hugentobler and Stefan Holl; KOSMO: Manuel Navarro; MapWindow: Daniel Ames, uDig: Jody Garnet and Jesse Eichar, SAGA: Olaf Conrad; ILWIS: Martin Schouwenburg; OpenJUMP: Michaël Michaud, DeeJUMP: Andreas Schmitz; PirolJUMP: Arnd Kielhorn; SkyJUMP: Larry Becker; gvSIG: Mario Carrera; and OrbisGIS: Erwan Bocher. I would like to thank Ralf Tauscher, Jan-Oliver Wagner and others for comments and suggestions on foregoing presentation slides and first manuscript versions. The icons used on this page are from FAMFAMFAM. Finally many thanks to Gary Sherman for hosting this page. |
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