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Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science Proceedings of an International Symposium (2004) / Chapter Skim
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30 Open-Source Geographic Information Systems Software: Myths and Realities
Pages 127-133

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From page 127...
... A recent survey on intellectual property rights and international development commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom underpins such policies with an explicit recommendation. Developing countries and their donor partners should review policies for procurement of computer software, with a view to ensuring that options for using low-cost and/or open-source software products are properly considered and their costs and benefits carefully evaluated.
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From page 128...
... Most projects reverse-engineer existing designs or comply with standards, and few products are innovative. Therefore, there is much scope for new ideas, especially considering recent advances in geographical information science and spatial databases and the much-increased availability of Earth observation satellites.
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From page 129...
... The project team consists of one to three individuals, usually from the same location and working in their spare time. The software products usually are small specialized applications that address specific requirements.
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From page 130...
... The relatively small proportion of innovative projects (19 percent) indicates that the design of most opensource software products is based on the postmature and standards-led production models, where the main aim is not directly to produce innovation but to lower licensing costs and to break commercial monopolies.
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From page 131...
... As an example of government-funded projects, a group of research and development institutions in Brazil is currently developing TerraLib,4 an open-source GIS library that enables quick development of custom-built applications for spatial data analysis. As a research tool TerraLib aims to enable the development of GIS prototypes that would include recent advances in geoinformation science.
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From page 132...
... Developing software in a decentralized manner requires a modular design, which is difficult to achieve for most applications, since few software products can be broken in very small parts without a substantial increase in interaction costs. The direct participation of universities in open-source software is limited due to the conflict between the generation of new research ideas and the need for long-term software maintenance and upgrades.
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From page 133...
... Some Economic Policy Issues of the Software Market, Seminar for Economic Theory, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. Stonebraker, M., and L
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Key Terms

  • earth observation
  • developing nations
  • geographical information
  • spatial data
  • database management

  • software products
  • spatial information
  • recent advances
  • information science
  • geoinformation technology

  • innovative projects
  • software production
  • conceptual design
  • observation business
  • teams develop

  • spatial database
  • web servers
  • instituto nacional
  • spatial analysis
  • examples include

  • licensing costs
  • international development
  • quick development
  • pesquisas espaciais
  • geoinformation software

  • spatial databases
  • project core
  • specialized applications
  • property viewpoint
  • enables quick


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