Rich Shepard <[email protected]> writes: > On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, Thomas Adams wrote: > >> The only problem (not for us per se) is wider acceptance of GRASS GIS >> based on inherent biases derived from a lack of familiarity with GRASS and >> blind disregard for it. At worst, GRASS' capabilities are misrepresented. >> GRASS, QGIS, SAGA GIS, etc. represent threats to ESRI -- they are not >> above spreading falsehoods... A larger user base enriches open source >> projects -- R serves as a great example... > > Tom, > > I concur completely. Think back to 1981-1989 when no one was fired for > specifying IBM for PC hardware despite Epson, Compaq, Leading Edge, etc. > being technically better and _much_ less expensive. > > Because ESRI, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc. see F/OSS as a threat they do > throw around their weight to maintain market share. Part of the way they do > this is by purchasing advertising space in general market publications as > well as specialty publications for their particular software. Therefore, > those publications will not promote F/OSS software since there's no revenue > from this source and they are, after all, in business to make money. > > Perhaps the best way of advocating for GRASS, R, etc. is a two-pronged > approach. The prong of least resistance is to demonstrate the capabilities > of F/OSS software to provide necessary business solutions by using this > software rather than proprietary versions. I've run my environmental > consultancy since 1997 using only linux and F/OSS applications (most > frequently LaTeX, R, GRASS, and PostgreSQL/SQLite. > > The second prong is more difficult: get users who regularly use GRASS, R, > LibreOffice, and other F/OSS applications to defenestrate and move to linux. > Given the plethora of various Ubuntu flavors most who make the move find it > painless and learn the joy of free and better quality software at the OS > level, too.
I agree that Linux is a great OS, but I moved to Apple (not the place here to discuss why) and I try to advocate that one can use F/OSS software easily when using other OS as well - Apple with OS X and macOS and homebrew works perfectly, and I think that Windows works as well - although not that easily (?). So I say: it is very important to use F/OSS software, on whatever OS you are working. If you want to (and it is not difficult) switch to Linux, but this is not essential. Cheers, Rainer > > Rich > _______________________________________________ > grass-user mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user > -- Rainer M. Krug email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de PGP: 0x0F52F982
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