GRASS, which stands for Geographic Resources Analysis Support System). Let's take a look at some of the options. While their flagship product is closed source, I would be remiss not to note that Esri has made numerous contributions to the open source community.įortunately, GIS users have a few choices for using open source tools to design maps and work with spatial data that can be obtained under free and open source licenses and which run on a variety of different non-Windows operating systems. Linux and Mac users are out of luck unless they want to run ArcGIS in a virtualized environment, and even then, they're still using a closed source product that can be very expensive to license.
ArcGIS is an incredibly powerful tool, but unfortunately, it's a proprietary product that is designed for Windows. If you've ever worked with geographic data on the desktop, chances are that you used Esri's ArcGIS application in at least part of your work. Much more than just making pretty maps and helping us get from point A to point B, GIS technologies are what allow us to plan our cities, route the infrastructure that enables everything we do, preserve our natural resources, save lives in times of disaster, and so much more.
0 kommentar(er)
