In 2008 I worked on a project all based on ESRI 9.2 family. At that point I didn´t know much of ESRI products and had only worked with foss products. Now I feel more confortable to give an opinion for that:
# myth monopoly : every only remember the (supposed) 30% esri market share. Remember there´s also very nice commercial products like Safe FME, CadCorp, ManiFold, PCI, ERDAS, ENVI and others ( and sometimes most of these are embed on ESRI packs - eg.: raster support on AG family ) # sustainability : while every major release of ESRI will force you to re-develop your customizations, FOSS products keep release more compatible. Example: a MapServer 3.x developer will use the same principles and concepts on MapServer 5.x version. But, an ArcIMS developer had to change its base when upgrading to ArcGIS Server 9.1, recode for adapting to ArcGIS Server 9.2 API´s and now all this concepts will change again with 9.3 version. # maintenance : foss product will run more closer to open standards ( eg.: OGC´s ). So, you change foss parts without re-coding your entire solution. The cost of training a new human resource on insert/update/delete geo-feature using ArcObjects/ArcSDE is so much higher when compared to OGC-SFS, per example. # support : while on FOSS communities you can have a reply on minutes, on 'esri forum' you can your topic open for months ( http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=158&f=2284&t=251001 , http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=158&f=2290&t=253698 , http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=985&t=270205&g=1 ) and NEVER get a solution. In my sample, we discover a bug on ArcSDE/ArcMap 9.2sp4 but this will certainly NEVER be fixed because sp6 didn´t fixed and ESRI will probably only look for 9.3 developments for now and on. Because non-US customers CAN´T contact ESRI directly, we can only keep suffering with poor local support. best regards, -- Eduardo Kanegae http://anthologis.com http://blogdopatto.webmapit.com.br On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Michael P. Gerlek <[email protected]> wrote: > Gentlepersons: > > I'm doing an article addressing the top ~10 myths/misperceptions about open > source for geo. There are a number of such pieces already out there about > open source in general, from which I'll borrow heavily, but I'd like to have > half the list be myths specific to the geo and GIS world we're playing in. > > Do you have any nominations? Which issues are not well understood? What > questions do you most frequently get asked? > > > Thanks in advance - > > -mpg > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
