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?

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.

The Import Cartography blog announced several geospatial data tools for Python users and developers. First there's Shapely 1.0: "Shapely is a Python package for programming with 2D geospatial geometries. It is based on GEOS. Shapely 1.0 is ignorant about coordinate and reference systems. Projection responsibility is left to specific applications", then there's Rtree 0.4: "Whether for in-memory feature stores, Plone content, or whatever -- we need an index to speed up the search for objects that intersect with a spatial bounding box.", SpatialIndex 1.3.0 and WorldMill 0.1. See also the numerous related stories below.

The OSGeo has announced the graduation of the open source Quantum GIS to a full OSGeo project. From the announcement: "Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports many vector, raster, and database formats and lets you browse and create map data on your computer. Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project." QGIS has been mentioned here several times, see also related stories below.