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On Monday 08 July 2002 12:38 pm, Adrian Midgley wrote:
GIS are an area where OSS has high credibility, although as usual the initial ease of use makes it easy to sell proprietary creeks up which organisations can be induced to sail.
As far as I am aware the only fully featured OSS GIS software out there is GRASS http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/ which, as primarily a raster GIS, is not particularly suited to the realms of socioeconomic data. There are however a lot of tools and smaller applications in various states of development which could be woven together to meet many requirements. http://www.freegis.org/index.en.html <gripe> Personally I find data a bigger problem than software. Your average map savvy subject of the Queen (don't call me a citizen until I am one!) wanting to to use their home computer to do a little geospatial analysis of their local area will find themselves distinctly short of good data unless they have very deep pockets. So I guess that Plymouth's initiative should be applauded, although I should imagine the data will have had a "spin" put on it before it is allowed out of the system </gripe>
http://www.usgs.gov/research/gis/title.html By the time adverts are put out hte software has often been selected, but if a research process is underway then a word with anyone's local councillor, backed up by some details, might save the rate-payers some money and future turbulence.
I could have a word with my friendly local councillor next time I see him in the pub, If I can get there early enough to catch him sober :) Tony -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.