Open Source GIS - What is it’s motive?
Posted by Aaron VanWieren on 13 Aug 2007 at 07:29 am | Tagged as: Cartography And GIS, GIS Development
Open source has created a stir the last several years in IT(Information Technology), for which I feel the industry did and maybe still does not understand what role open source should and does play as a piece or whole of a corporate infrastructure. I have tried to remain on the outskirts of the issue on the growing demand for open source in GIS and geographic mapping packages, until I read on another Geoblog that we need open source in order to defeat ESRI as well as the UC conference rumblings about big bad ESRI and happy innovative google(Sorry, no direct quotes here, you can easily google ESRI UC and Google to get exactly the idea). Now note, I am not a paid or unpaid supporter of either company or any of the open source GIS companies as well. What my motivation here is, to point out that OPEN SOURCE DOES NOT HAVE A MOTIVE!!!! It is a loose theoretical concept describing a different set of business implementation logic and licensing, it does not aim to be a means to an end for a company.
Now, it may get used as a tool to remove a major player by a company supporting open source products but, in the end it is all about distribution, support and what not, it is a different business implementation, a different licensing scheme. From IT, open source has even come to be associated with a community mentality, as I am sure it is the same with some open source GIS initiatives.
ESRI does not have to worry about open source, as a company, it knows what market it is attracting and is aware of who is using their products. They do have to be aware of the changes in landscape, such as new file formats and data types, such as mashups and kml file types. This is why they have implemented these capabilities in their products. I really don’t feel it is a battle of money, but a difference in corporate mentality. Studies from IT have shown that there are pluses as well as minuses to open source implementations, which I will probably outline more in later postings, but each implementation fulfills different niches and confidence levels of the market.
Tools like google earth and what not are great, they put mapping capabilities into more peoples hands. But, often, it does not provide a means to do so correctly or spatially correct (see NeoGeography). But there has been allot more focus on what can be done with spatial implementation and presentation over the internet, partially due to new open source, lower cost internet mapping tools. But, ESRI when it comes down to it, is made for the professional company who is solving a specific business logic that requires the tools that they offer. In my current company we tried some implementations in Google Earth and even ArcExplorer and found currently they are not at the level we needed them to be for an enterprise (custom) implementation. So it all comes down to what you are using and how robust a software API/Package you need as well as company support versus community support.
As I said, it is not about us versus them, or “Damn the Man”, it is all about options and determining what you or your company needs in order to provide to your clients or viewers what they need. ESRI has been one of the only options for flexible GIS for a long time, while new players like Google Earth are pushing the bounds of what can be done, but the end result is a richer user experience and the possibility to use GIS in a wider context. I agree ESRI’s licensing is a little out of whack price wise, and there are issues with this or that GIS function, but for creating dynamic and complex GIS solutions on an enterprise scale or programmer extendibility there really is no other options. I look forward to the continuation of new tools and capabilities in digital cartography and GIS and think both ESRI and open source options will continue to push the envelope of what can be done. I don’t see one or the other as good or bad, just different strategic resources. As I said in my opening, it is not about reducing the power of one company, but enhancing and providing more!
Talk Hard…
Your article makes some good points, but why choose Google as the counter-example to ESRI when Google aren’t open source? They may be free, and fun, but they are not open.
True, I guess I should elaborate more on that in the follow up or widen it to open source and free tools. Very good point that I just did not even considering separating the two. I believe the points are still valid either way as they have the same after affect. I also have heard and read allot of times about Google this or that killing ESRI and just lumped them into open source.
Thank you for setting me straight.
Aaron
www.gisdevcafe.com
Not a problem Aaron- it’s just a pet peeve of mine really and your points are totally valid. I would say though that Google are perhaps more of a threat to ESRI than some of the genuinely open tools- I think that they have forced ESRI to think more carefully about some of their directions- for example Google Earth stomps all over ESRI’s Arc Globe!
Also I think that some of the other big companies *are* changing the way that they work as a consequence of the increasing popularity of the open source movement. Take Autodesk- Mapguide was a fully commercial product until a few years ago, but not all that well used. By forking it’s development and making one strand open source they have attracted a large following, got more people using both the open source and the commercial product, and got some pretty good PR in the process.
I way oversimplified the definition, it is fairly easy to do. In IT open source defines a very specific mind set, it was this mind set more so than the products themselves I was attempting to get at. In the geosphere it more a matter of free gis tools and the associated add-ons and extended add-ons (3rd party or open source). The GIS market has not really had allot of native open source products (such as mapserver) by definition.
In regard to ArcGlobe and ArcExplorer, I feel ESRI has attempted for a while to provide a lower end, free, user interface to GIS for general purposes. I do not think they have been very successful in this implementation. Google’s wider recognition by casual users is largely what has lead to their wide acceptance and success in the everyday user market.
I agree that some big companies are definately changing the way they think about marketing and/or providing their products to different users. Really good point on that and I would agree.
I think things are changing in the geospatial market and it is good for the industry as it will provide hopefully more innovation and interest in spatial data and information from a much wider audience.