On Apr 18, 2008, at 5:15 PM, percy wrote:
I think the key here is to discuss the Extensions to Arcview and Arcmap. Much of the base functionality can be covered by these FOSS desktop clients like gvSIG and QGIS and UDIG, but extensions like Spatial analyst and 3D analyst, for some of us, is where it becomes difficult to our work done using only FOSS.
I think a key component would be an open source interpreter for Avenue implemented for either QGIS, uDig, or gvSIG. It wouldn't need to be complete parity with what ArcView 3.x had, but if it were at least an 80/20 solution, folks with scripts and utilities that they're using for basic data manipulation and simple analysis would have an upgrade path.
ESRI abandoned lots of smalltime developers when they moved from ArcView 3.x to ArcGIS and didn't bring the Avenue folks along for the ride. Rather than face the migration cost of rewriting all of their Avenue code, they're just sitting there hoping things will continue to work unsupported for a while. ESRI's not going to bring Avenue forward -- they've moved on to .NET and COM Python wrappers -- and I think there's a significant audience of analysis-oriented folks that were left behind. If the open source world gave these folks a potential migration path, it might generate enough interest and funding to bootstrap it.
Alternatively, if ESRI wanted to totally fluster the open source desktop market, they could GPL ArcView (the pieces of it they own and could actually license) and let all of us freetards froth over it for two or three years trying to beat it into some kind of shape. By the time we actually get it to work, they'll probably be end-of-life'ing ArcGIS and on to the next thing...
Howard _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
