[CoLoCo] Front Range Users of Geospatial Open Source?

[Neal McBurnett]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 09:18:52AM -0700, Jennifer Horsman wrote:
> I am a GIS user and second the opinion on ESRI products. It is really 
> difficult to move away from such a great product once you have really 
> learned how to use it. With GIS, the concepts are not that difficult to 
> grasp, but learning to use the software is quite a hurdle. However, as a 
> person who is interested in starting up a GIS contract-based business, 
> the ESRI software is prohibitively expensive. For this reason, software 
> like GRASS is very attractive. I have been thinking about trying to 
> learn it in earnest and I think you may find there are people out there 
> who feel the same - and are very interested in Linux. Obviously, any of 
> the members of FRUGOS are interested in open source GIS and Unix/Linux 
> is the best choice for running these products on.
> 
> I have worked for the government too and 10 years ago, the lab I worked 
> for was using GRASS exclusively. Of course, it was originally developed 
> by the US government!
> 
> Jennifer

Thanks Jennifer.  I've been lurking occasionally in the GIS area for
over a decade and this seems right.  And I hope the GRASS fans can
make headway.

The new more open data formats in ESRI sound very helpful.  How is
support for them in GRASS et al?  Perhaps one use case for GRASS would
be to help governments and consultants deliver good GIS data to users
who couldn't afford ESRI?

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/