So, who's going to condense this and related threads into a presentation at FOSS4G2008?
It's the sort of input a lot of people are interested in. Gavin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Micha Silver Sent: 26 April 2008 04:32 PM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] RE: Comparison between Proprietary and OS Andre Grobler wrote: > ... > > So the hurdles for me to OS were "acceptance" specifically for the following > reasons: > Free and easy access and training of ESRI at varsity. Autocad did the same > and look where that got them. > Linux, just mentioning command lines has me a little nervous. (I know this > is changing, but the field calculator is enough programming for me, thanks) > > ... > > So in short I am doing what somebody already suggested, get ESRI for day to > day soft landing and learn OS GRASS and OSSIM meanwhile for real work;-) > Hopefully in a while I'll wonder what the fuss was about... and possibly > contribute, if only to the dummies FAQ section. > > André Grobler > > Andre: I had the privilege recently to give a short beginners course in GIS to a small group of undergrads in environmental science. Before the semester started I had decided to give the course based on FOSS tools. I first sat down with the network technician, who told me that they have ArcGIS 9, network licence, but he don't know where the disks were, and was concerned about space on the server, network traffic, bogging down their Terminal Server etc, etc. So I (rubbing my hands together) told him, no problem, we're going with Open Source Software. Turned out some of the students had MACs and one was using Ubuntu, so the choice to go with OSS tools was a no brainer. To my surprise, by the forth lesson we had gotten to watershed analysis, and students were running the GRASS modules (within QGIS). Admittedly we leapfrogged over some stuff, but still I doubt I could have reached that level with Arc* tools in such a short time span. The "comfort zone" problem is well know and likely the most difficult hurdle to overcome when trying to migrate to OSS tools. But to some extent it's nothing more than a matter of perception. Proprietary software vendors have surrounded us with distorting mirrors. Once you step away, things look quite different. Regards, Micha _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
