Previous Articles

In this edition of the magazine two areas of focus are Internet Mapping and Open Source.  During its initial year Eye on the Web has covered both subjects and I thought it would be apt to touch on what has changed and advanced.

Simple enough you may say.  Well this has proved to be quite difficult as even as I write this article my Inbox seems to get daily emails from Goole Alerts as to different companies releasing their proprietary code to Open Source.  Many of these have sound business reasoning to do this. One example is SRC, an American company who have just released their Desktop geocoder source code, their goal is that businesses will start to use their other Business Intelligence products and had the analogy that their CEO used “we have provided the spell checker for free with the hope that businesses will upgrade to the word processor” – this begs me to wonder if people sometimes miss all the points.  There are 4 main freedoms to Free and Open Source software (a) freedom to run; (b) freedom to study; (c) freedom to modify; and (d) freedom to redistribute a program – people quite often just think about (d) freedom to redistribute aka “free lunch” – you can copy and use the software without paying.  Another interesting angle on this is the freedom to run.  This can quite often be seen as the reason why a lot of Open Source software programs flounder – they are, simply put, too difficult for most users to run from source.

Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)

The combination of both Open Source and Internet Mapping brings along another change this year and that is the formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (http://www.osgeo.org).  Issues can arise if individual open source projects are immature or not policed correctly.  Within the Geospatial space this is where the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is helping more.  It is trying to help with the policing and, as such, having incubation periods for proposed new projects to help with any Copyright and / or IP fears.   But this is not all - to quote Jo WALSH @ mappinghacks.com regarding the Foundation - There is “something more organic” here; a common vision expressed in software, in a software domain focused towards better and more open models of the world around us. OSGeo almost doesn’t need to focus on communication between projects, because so much of it is already happening between the protagonists. So part of a foundation’s role becomes, to create a space where people who are new to geospatial, or new to open source, “can find a group of supportive people, and a structure that can bootstrap them to bring the idea to reality“.

Autodesk and MapGuide Open Source

One of the first open source projects that will be interesting to see develop will be that of MapGuide Open Source.  This is a new type of development for the billion dollar company Autodesk.  Apparently there will be commercial and open source versions with the commercial version regularly baselined FROM the open source version.

AGI Technical SIG & Open Source

The day included vendors who appeared to be trying to justify all closed source – but I wonder of that the right approach?  I believe that Open Source is beneficial whereby a general requirement is fulfilled i.e. an Operating System, Programming Language, Web Server.  In the GI arena successful projects include the GDAL / OGR Libraries for reading / writing various open and proprietary formats, MapServer the best Web Server, PostGIS – the best spatial database (an extension to PostgreSQL). 

One interesting comment that was mentioned was how open standards aren't open source but isn't it funny that open source projects in general strictly adhere to open standards where as some other 'closed source' giants often add bits to the open standards – as we are all aware this happens in general software as well as the GI Arena.

Internet Mapping

My first Eye on the Web covered Google Maps.  What a breakthrough that has been (the solution as well as the article!) in opening the eyes and minds of non GI people to the possibilities of Internet Mapping.  There has been much advancement and competition from the ‘big 3 search engines’ in this area.  Both Yahoo and MSN (aka Microsoft) have their own mapping platforms that are helping to drive the ‘local search’ market.  Local search is seen as a potential big revenue earner for these companies.  As we are all no doubt aware the search engines generate revenue from advertising and much of this advertising comes from small businesses who traditionally would also advertise in the Yellow Pages or similar.  This, I believe, is the real revenue generating goal of ‘Local Search’ from the search engines.  Imagine the additional revenues they can make if all advertisers in the ‘Yellow Pages’ market were to spend their advertising money through the new Internet Local Ad’s.

A recent US based New Evans Data survey into Location-based development tools has put Google at the top of the list.  Open Source engines including those such as MapServer are ranked second with about 10% share.  ESRI, MapInfo and other vendors are ranked further down but, to be fair, it is pretty difficult to keep up when the alternatives can be used at no licensing costs!  I don’t necessarily think that Google Maps is number one from a technical point of perspective as I believe that, from hands on experience, the API’s for the big three offer pretty much the same functionality. It may of course be more result of marketing – being first to market and also, despite their rapid growth and controversial Asian ventures, continue to promote their mantra to ‘not do evil’.

Open Source with a twist

The following is from an article in the Economist that is food for thought “The Open Source process of creating things is quickly becoming a threat—and an opportunity - to businesses of all kinds. Though the term at first described a model of software development (where the underlying programming code is open to inspection, modification and redistribution), the approach has moved far beyond its origins. From legal research to biotechnology, open-business practices have emerged as a mainstream way for collaboration to happen online. New business models are being built around commercialising open-source wares, by bundling them in other products or services. Though these might not contain any software ‘source code’, the Open Source label can now apply more broadly to all sorts of endeavour that amalgamate the contributions of private individuals to create something that, in effect, becomes freely available to all.”

Conclusion

I believe that there is a time, place and raft of customers for Open Source Internet Mapping.  If looking for Open Source it is advisable to work with a company that will support you through the process (and share risk) to ensure that the software you choose has the necessary following.  In many cases this is signified by a foundation of sorts and if you are looking in the Geospatial market then you should look at the Open Source Geospatial Foundation – ‘as it says on the tin' it covers both topics from this article  - Open Source & Internet Mapping.