Want to know about open source GIS? It’s possible it’s lying under your nose and is incorporated into your day-to-day use and yet you don’t realize it sometimes. GIS is essentially ‘geographic information system’, which is an information system designed to capture, integrate, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and display all forms of geographically referenced data. In case you’re pondering, it is the very kind of system present in mobile phone GPS and what Google Maps or Bing Maps thrive on.
As far as open source GIS in particular goes, since open source can be defined as a software which can be easily accessed and its source code modified, open GIS are information systems which can be easily accessed and the source code manipulated to influence the geographically referenced data it displays.
taken from grassbook.org
Open Source GIS has its edge over the normal package because of a variety of reasons, which is why it is getting more and more popular in the community of programmers. The biggest edge of open source GIS is that it is free. Absolutely free and legal, so talk about low start-up costs. Of course, it’s a feature shared with web mapping services such as Google Maps, hence it makes you wonder why this particular category is experiencing a bloom.
Open Source GIS is more marketable because in this competitive and evolutionary job market, it is a smarter idea to promote a complete GIS software. Since it’s an open source software, community involvement and the interest of programmers in its development really matters—and that is a given, as it has a lot of community support. Using open source GIS is a securer venture than using any other kind of GIS, because it is built in a superior manner than proprietary software. Again, community backing means that bugs and glitches are found and fixed quickly.
The system is much more complete than proprietary GIS software available, as it contains desktop GIS, spatial database storage, a plethora of analysis tools, server and community designed add-ons. Open GIS is also compatible with all major operating systems such as Mac, Linux or Windows. Additionally, it is usually also compatible with older formats of GIS data, so that none of it is ever rendered useless, such as .shp files. It is inevitable that by using open source software, researchers and solution developers can access a wider variety of tools than offered by most commercial alternates.
Open geographical information systems are forming the grounds for any breakthroughs in GIS which can make the access and manipulation of geographical data a much more intricate, focused and user-friendly task. For just about anyone who needs to work with such as system should pick open source GIS rather than restrict his opportunities with a commercial software, made to function but not expand as per needs of the ever-changing technological arena.
