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Free and Open Source GIS

We are big proponents of free (libre) and open source GIS. We use open source programs as much as possible, at work and at play. You’ll notice several (most?) of our blog posts include FOSS GIS in some way, partly because we want to promote it, and partly because we’re learning many of these packages ourselves and blogging is a great way to document what you’ve learned!

I’ve been asked a number of times about open source alternatives to traditional commercial GIS. It’s a good question. There is so much to choose from in the open source community. Commercial GIS packages (ESRI, Autodesk, MapInfo, Integraph, Manifold, LEICA, ENVI) are very powerful, offer a range of development options, provide other supporting products for a complete enterprise solution (database, web, mobile), yet may be very expensive and burdensome to accomplish simple tasks.

FOSS GIS has reached a mature enough stage in recent years that it may be a more efficient alternative to commercial GIS in many instances. With the exploding popularity of geoapplications and the concept of location being ingrained into many arenas, while incorporating the current IT climate of smaller, faster, cheaper applications, open source GIS should garner serious consideration from any GIS user. In fact, FOSS software have been identified as COTS software by many organizations (US Navy for one) and is considered alongside any proprietary, commercial solution.

Here’s what we’re using now, or researching for potential use. “Now” refers to the time of this writing, not necessarily what we’ve used before. This list will change, of course. Coming from a decade of using the suite of tools from ESRI, Leica/ERDAS, Microsoft and Oracle, this list helps us focus our efforts in utilizing FOSS4G.

We hope you find these useful!

Desktop GIS, Image Processing, and Analysis

Web Map Servers and Clients

Development

  • FWTools - a set of Open Source GIS binaries for Windows and Linux
  • OGR/GDAL - libraries for reading and writing geospatial data
  • PROJ4 - Cartographic Projections Library
  • Python

Portal/Clearinghouse

Database

3D Viewer

More info about Open Source GIS

Online resources on Open Source GIS.
Books, Journals, Publications

For more information about products and standards, and a more comprehensive list of free and open source geospatial software, check out the following: