In the states it's all ESRI all day.A few small governments might try to run in a FOSS4G direction but it's rare. In the Southeast they go "what is the next town over doing? we will do the same thing". The models that ESRI provide are tempting for many because suddenly everyone is doing the exact same thing. So with no thought - Gov't A can share with Gov't B. They feel as thought they are adhering to a standard - of course a standard put forth by a software company.
My business is swinging in a more foss4g direction although I still use ESRI software as many of my customers do - but it's getting rare. So rare I opted to not renew my ESRI licensing this year. Many of my clients are versions back so I can sit on 10.2 for a while. I still get "well that free stuff can't be that good" but I'm slowly winning over clients as They are getting very good data with qgis/postgis and the word is spreading. Yes it's free but it's very professional.
Well - we seem to have started something - question is where do we go next with this?
Randy On 06/12/2015 04:34 AM, Andreas Neumann wrote:
Hi Steve, Thank you for raising this important discussion.In some European countries the situation is a bit different and Open Source solutions are gaining an increasing market share. I live and work in Switzerland - and while the majority of the markets still uses ESRI products - there is an increasing number of provinces who also increasingly use Postgis, QGIS, OpenLayers, etc - sometimes exclusively and sometimes side by side with proprietary software.I also think that the next couple of years we will see an increasing number of governmental organisations introducing OpenSource GIS side by side with commercial GIS and will gradually shift more and more applications to FOSSGIS.Some examples in Switzerland:* The national mapping portal runs exclusively on OS software (Postgis, OpenLayers, and some more) - it runs very well, fast and is very popular - production of the data is still done exclusively in ESRI * 2 provinces in Switzerland run exclusively in FOSSGIS, about 7 and 8 additional provinces introduced FOSSGIS side by side with commercial products * several cities and water/gaz providers are currently migrating to FOSSGIS to document utility networks * The austrian province "Vorarlberg" introduced several hundred installations of QGIS as the main GIS in their administration * several Scandinavian countries/provinces/cities are already using FOSSGIS on both Desktop GIS and web mappingThe list would be much longer - but things are moving slowly and steadily to more FOSSGIS usage in Europe - at least I can tellThere are two other interesting points:* in my opinion - it is not so much about money - but about different values: the ability to more easily influence the direction of the software, support of open standards, integration with other FOSS software, etc. * as an employee of a local government it is so much more interesting being able to actively contribute to FOSS software rather than just using software "as is".As you can see above - it is more the "richer" countries that are moving towards Open Source and fewer "poorer" countries. This indicates that the factor "cost" is less important than people think.Andreas On 11.06.2015 22:28, Steve G wrote:I am not sure this is the correct forum for a start to this discussion, but I've been pondering this for a while and interested what others think. I work for local government in the U.S. and when people generally talk aboutGIS there is no doubt an automatic association with the ESRI ArcGISplatform. And beyond GIS itself, the dominance that ESRI has is even more pronounced given the fact that many cities have implemented other relatedsystems (permitting, computer aided dispatch, etc) that are identifiedbusiness partners with ESRI. Furthermore, the "GIS Local Government" trackthat ESRI developed has evolved to offer an "turnkey" approach for localgovernment self-service to establish a robust geodatabase (Local GovernmentInformation Model), maps, apps, web services, etc. This extends a COTSapproach for local governments to establish, develop, and maintain a fairlycomplete GIS. In my opinion, pure genius...because for a lot of smallcities/governments with limited staff and budget, the turnkey approach is very appealing. For city bureaucrats thinking about implementing/extendingGIS, what they might think as little $$$ and you get all of this? Awesome...here's my money. HOWEVER, this approach has its drawbacks. Long-term license/use costs, vendor lock-in, continuous waiting for someone at the company to fixsomething....well, the list goes on (just read any blog post supporting opensource/FOSS).So, with the evolution of QGIS as a prevailing replacement/alternative forthe other product, is anyone thinking about building more of a turnkey approach (database, maps, apps, web services, etc) geared to local governments? I like the direction of the OpenGeo platform (and others) trying to provide the whole software stack, but still if a small localgovernment wants to have a full fledged interactive GIS, it might seem likea lot of work to develop and maintain. I am interested in other thoughts...perhaps this belongs on a blog post somewhere more independent, but perhaps this can be a place to begin. Steve G. --View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Local-Government-for-QGIS-tp5210489.htmlSent from the Quantum GIS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user_______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
-- ----------------- Randal Hale North River Geographic Systems, Inc http://www.northrivergeographic.com 423.653.3611 rjh...@northrivergeographic.com twitter:rjhale http://about.me/rjhale http://www.northrivergeographic.com/introduction-to-quantum-gis Southeast OSGEO: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Southeast_US _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
