Slashgeo

I'd like your opinion on the different open source GIS projects. I'm looking for a GIS for our 50+ non-GIS-savvy scientists here. We use mainly use Debian. I quickly looked at GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, OSSIM and others. Some look great, but I can't decide which one to adopt! Here are our requirements: (a) easy enough to use for non-geospatial scientists, (b) able to read, convert and save most GIS/RS file formats, (c) allow basic data processing (e.g. reprojections, interpolations, data cropping, merging, cookie cutter, etc). For my personnal needs, I'd like the chosen GIS powerful and have a bright future. So far, I believe QGIS is my front runner. Am I doing a good choice?

Over the Quantum GIS blog, the easy-to-use open source desktop GIS in active development, we learn about Quantum Navigator, a new open source routing / navigation system in the works. From the announcement: "The aim of the project is to enable basic routing and navigation capabilities on a roadmap. Given a shapefile of roadmap with correct format, you'll be able to select start and end point of your route. The application will calculate you a route that will meet your needs (shortest, fastest or economic path). This route should follow all restrictions like one-way streets or turning restrictions from one road to another one." I wonder if they're aware of the open source GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav efforts? Related to QGIS, there's a QGIS MapServer project in development, described as: "QGIS mapserver is a server module for geographic maps. The content of vector and raster datasources (e.g. shapefiles, gml, postgis, wfs, geotiff ) is visualized according to the request parameters. The generated map image is sent back to the client over the internet.".

Lots of talk about Jo Cook's FOSS4G talk about portable GIS. Spatially Adjusted had a post a few days ago that links to a dedicated page on portable GIS on archaeogeek.. This has lots of implications for projects in developing countries, where computing infrastructure is an issue. Dr Barry Rowlingson's talk at FOSS4G, on Arlat (QGIS for visualzation and mapping integrated with R for spatial stats, using python) is the type of project that could benefit from being portable.

st_0x0ef writes "Not everyone wants a full blown GIS desktop application. Sometimes you want to just have a widget inside your application that displays a map while the main goal of the application lies elsewhere. In these tutorials Tim Sutton show how to embed QGIS widget in your C++ applications to quickly develop geospatial applications." A few previous stories on Quantum GIS copied below.

I'm happy to read the OSGeo's open source Quantum GIS (QGIS) 0.9.1 was officially released a week ago. From the announcement: "This is primarily a bug fix release and includes the following key changes: 70 Bugs closed, Added locale tab to options dialog so that locale can be overridden, Cleanups and additions to GRASS tools, Python Plugin Installer for installing plugins from the PyQGIS repository, Documentation updates, Improvements for building under MSVC." I copied some of the previous stories on QGIS below.

Hamish writes "Good news from the Open Source Geospatial Foundation: 'OSGeo is pleased to announce that Google has accepted OSGeo as mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2008 program. This program provides funding for students to work on open source projects under the support of experienced mentors. The projects participating through OSGeo are OpenLayers, GDAL, GRASS, Mapbender, Quantum GIS, MapServer, GeoServer, GeoTools, uDig, and OpenJUMP/Degree.

Students interested in participating can find more information on OSGeo project ideas here and more information about the program as a whole here.'" See the story below for OSGeo's projects within Google's SoC 2007.