Open Source Web-Mapping

Tired of outrageously expensive software to launch web-mapping applications? Tyler Mitchell discusses how you can obtain all the tools you need to develop all kinds of GIS applications, for free, in this article  in Directions Magazine. However, there are drawbacks to Open Source software. You may have to sacrifice your free time to learn how to install and configure all the necessary components to get some of these GIS applications to work. I downloaded MapServer several months ago and I haven't had enough time to get it up and running on my Suse Linux machine. If you have time and patience (who's got that?), Open Source might work out for you.

Comments

[Justin]

I attended a session at the ESRI User Conference in 2003. The topic was Installing ArcIMS. I took 4 pages of notes on how to determine the site configuration, install and "post install" the ArcIMS software, acquire and install and the servlet engine (available for extra $$ from a third party), configure the web server, and configure the IMS memory, variables, and proxy server.

All of this functionality is available to you out of the box for what? $10,000 plus never-ending annual licensing fees?

I pre-ordered Tyler's book a month ago.

[Steve Chilton]

If people are interested in this topic the Society of Cartographers (UK) is having a debate on "Public Access to Maps and Data" - more from the data than the software angle - at its summer school in September.

In the UK, national geodata is collected and maintained by the Ordnance Survey (OS). Since 1998 the OS has been a Trading Fund, a government-owned company obliged to cover its own costs, and invest profits in its own infrastructure. The OS operates as a clearing-house for geodata collected by local government - new and renamed addresses, land use information, etc. The geodata held by the OS is licensed under Crown Copyright; it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act as a commercial interest. The OS co-owns the street address to lat/long geocoding data with the Post Office; both charge several thousand pounds for an annual license.

Will things change as far as data licencing and availability is concerned? Will local authorities be making their vast amounts of data more freely available? Will cartographers, and in particular the so-called “community cartographers” have freer access to basic geodata in the future? Will initiatives such as Creative Commons licensing have any significant effect? I don’t have any immediate answers to these questions, but I am certainly interested in them and feel that the cartographic industry needs to be taking a close interest in these developments.

If you want to find out more about these developments that may well affect you significantly as cartographers you should consider attending the Society of Cartographers Summer School this September, at Cambridge University. There is a whole morning session on the topic, with 6 presentations from contributors that include Roger Longhorn (policy analyst), Peter Cridland (local authority GIS expert), Ed Parsons (Chief Technology Officer at OS), and 3 “carto-activists” – if I may use such a phrase. After the presentations there is also a Panel Discussion involving all 6 presenters, where you will have a chance to ask questions, make your points, or just enjoy what looks like being a lively debate.

The Summer School also has the usual mix of formal presentations (including a keynote address by Chris Board, OBE), plus demos, workshops, visits and social events. See the weblinks below (which provided some of the facts in this note) for more information about this topic and the SoC summer school.

Further information
Roger Longhorn’s article on Geospatial Data Access - http://www.geoconnexion.com/magazine/article.asp?ID=2252
Open Knowledge Foundation - http://okfn.org/wiki/OpenGeoData
SoC Summer School - http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/gem/soc2005/