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I keep seeing more evidence that many people and organizations are migrating to open source GIS on the desktop. In many cases a mix of proprietary and open source GIS is in use.
I’m wondering about other’s experiences in this area. To gain some insight, I’ve created a poll (right margin). Please take a second and vote.
Can’t select multiple items and vote despite the “check all that apply” instructions. There’s something not working right.
Multiple selections are now possible—
I use a combination of proprietary and open source applications. In the proprietary camp, I actually find myself using ArcView more often than ArcGIS. The latter’s just too damn bloated to be of any real use, and the functions that used to be its sphere of influence are now done just as well (and usually faster) by open source apps. Besides – shapefiles (as archaic and stupid as they are) are an open format, while geodatabases are not.
I feel I should point out, though, that I failed to participate in your poll, simply because the choices were too few. There’s a LOT of open source software out there, especially if you’re producing maps for the web.
@Terry:
Agreed, there are a lot of other apps, but my focus in this case was on desktop GIS rather than the server side…
I actually keep breaking out JUMP (the original) for the excellent data cleaning tools (that as far as I know have not been ported to open jump).
@Jody,
Good point, I forgot about adding Jump and cousins…
If the migration is based on a cost issue: I feel a great solution is TatukGIS. Although not Open Source the tools they include with their Editor are outstanding! I also use their development language to create our own in house GIS applications in addition to client applications. It has the ability to connect to any GIS data source: shapefile, ESRI geodatabase, DWG, etc. But when it comes to open: uDig is great.