Open Source GIS Software

An Overview of Free & Open Source Desktop GIS (FOS-GIS)

Desktop GIS

Below you can find links to two tables that should give an overview of free Desktop GIS and projects. Desktop GIS means thereby that we did not inlcude map web server tools or basic GIS libraries. Please be aware that this listing is probably not comprehensive and that the comparison was done End of 2007.

OS Desktop GIS - general overview table

• html
• word-doc

OS Desktop GIS - functionality table

• Google Docs spreadsheet - 2010 version (note, things are ordered a bit different)
• hmtl - 2007 version
• word-doc - 2007 version

GIS software that does not qualify for the tables above

• html

The tables can be altered on request. Please write to sstein[-at-]geo.uzh.ch - and preferably add the tables with your changes (use for instance word doc + track changes mode)

Articles on free GIS

We also wrote one article that provides some more information on the desktop GIS projects and additionally contains an introduction on open source licenses and FOSGIS organizations (the first link). A second article presents a better "user-oriented" introduction, but focuses also more on the general GI(S) tools for landscape ecology - and not only desktop GIS. The third article concentrates on several free GIS tools, not just Desktop GIS.

• An Overview on Current Free and Open Source Desktop GIS Developments. (revised version from Sept. 2008 - pdf; final 2009 version DOI: 10.1080/13658810802634956)

• Free and Open Source Geographic Information Tools for Landscape Ecology. (revised version from July 2009 - pdf; final version DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2009.07.004)

• Free and open source GIS software for building a spatial data infrastructure. (revised version from May 2010 - pdf; in press; OGRS 2009 proceedings published by Springer). I have also given a talk on this - see the video on youtube & slides.

Notes

• Spring GIS will be "open-sourced" in the near future.

• I also got some [file:///c:/work/openjump/webpage/comment.html comments] from Gianni with a vendor perspective on the article and the tables

• Since people asked me a couple of times what free GIS is my favourit I decided to published my [file:///c:/work/openjump/webpage/selectingfreegis.html subjective answer on selecting a free GIS].

• The GISVM project offers a Linux distribution (Ubuntu) that contains several of the FOSS Desktop GIS above (e.g. QGIS, gvSIG, OpenJUMP, UDig,..), on one CD for download.

• There is also the LiveDVD project of the OSGeo foundation if you want to have a first look on the mentioned software.

Other FOS-GIS related comparisons

• The GeoTux team did a webmap client comparison (i.e. MapFish, MapBuilderm etc.). It should be updated every 6 months.
• Atle Frenvik Sveen wrote a n interesting thesis on how to evaluate and select a FOS (desktop) GIS for companies/projects called: "Use of Free and Open Source GIS in Commercial Firms" (it's from Dec. 2008)
• I came across this thesis by Todd R. Buchanan (2005) that compares the desktop GIS GRASS 6.0 and ArcGIS 9.0
• The Boston GIS Blog compared the following database systems SQL Server 2008 Spatial, PostgreSQL/PostGIS 1.3-1.4 and MySQL 5-6 (in May 2008)

Websites with listings of free GIS software (projects)

• www.freegis.org
• www.opensourcegis.org
• Related - If you ever wanted to know what the OpenStreetMap project is, then I recommend to watch this video presentation by Richard Weait.