[Fsf-friends] Invitation to free-gis mailing list

Sajith VK sajithvk@hotpop.com
Fri Jan 9 15:42:18 IST 2004


Hi,

GIS is one of the promising applications for geospatical data analysis.
If properly used it can create a good impact in our planning process and
decision making.

In India, several institutes have tried to use GIS software for their
work. They have mostly used proprierity software. Developing countries
like india cannot afford proprietary software especially for such
purposes. Because of the very high cost of the software, we cannot even
think about using the power of GIS for local level applications like
decentralised planning.

The biggest tragedy of using proprietary software is in the education
sector. The commonly used GIS applications are not affordable for our
students and educational institutes. As a result, we don't have
sufficient trained man power in GIS.

At the same time, a number of free software packages are available for
the same purpose. Many of them are equal or better in quality when
compared to their proprietary counterparts. One such package, GRASS
(Geographical Resource Analysis Support System) has been around for
several decades and is one of the most powerful GIS packages. Good
documentation is available, and the GRASS community offers good help
through its discussion groups. (A good news- IISc Banglore, has a mirror
site for GRASS). Thuban is one of the best GIS viewers and Mapserver is
the best webmapping tool available. A number of applications like
geotools, qgis, gpsman, ossim etc. are also available as Free Software.

We need to spread the news that all this software does exist and need to
help our people to use them. We also need to contribute back to the
community, as far as we can.

For all this, we need a place to discuss the issues we face, and to find
solutions together. Free-gis@iitcgpk.org is meant for this. Please join
the list if you are interested in using GIS applications and spreading
the word of freedom.  Please go to 
http://iitcgpk.org/mailman/listinfo/free-gis_iitcgpk.org
to join the list. 

-- 
Sajith VK <sajithvk@hotpop.com>





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