| 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 and that the comparison was done End of 2007. |
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OS Desktop GIS - general
overview table |
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 html |
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 word-doc |
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OS Desktop GIS -
functionality table |
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hmtl |
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word-doc |
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GIS software that does not
qualify for the tables above |
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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 one article that provides some more information on the
desktop GIS projects and additionally contains an introduction on open
source licenses and FOSGIS
organizations (the first link). A second article presents a better
"user-oriented" introduction, but focuses also more on the general
GI(S) tools for landscape ecology - and not only desktop GIS. |
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(revised version from Sept. 2008; final 2009 version DOI: 10.1080/13658810802634956)
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(revised version from July 2009; final version DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2009.07.004)
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Notes
- Spring
GIS will be "open-sourced" in the near future.
- I also got some comments from
Gianni with a vendor perspective on
the
article and the tables
- The GISVM project
offers a Linux
distribution (Ubuntu) that contains several of the FOSS Desktop GIS
above (e.g. QGIS, gvSIG, OpenJUMP, UDig,..), on one CD for download.
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Other FOS-GIS related comparisons:
|
| . The GeoTux
team did a webmap
client comparison (i.e. MapFish, MapBuilderm etc.). It should be
updated every 6 months. |
. 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)
|
| . I came
across this
thesis by
Todd R. Buchanan (2005) that compares the desktop GIS GRASS 6.0 and
ArcGIS 9.0 |
. 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 |
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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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