From jan at intevation.de Tue Jan 2 15:53:46 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 15:53:46 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] old FreeGIS now replaced Message-ID: <20010102155346.A28113@abnoba.intevation.de> Dear all, the old FreeGIS pages are now entirely replaced by the Zope-based FreeGIS. If you find some remaining bugs, please don't hesitate to report them. Cheers and a happy new year to all Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Tue Jan 2 19:26:23 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 10:26:23 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] Yukon 90 meter DEMs available for download Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D075307DF60E7@raptor.gov.yk.ca> > hope you had nice christmas days! And to you and yours! > > Yukon Renewable Resources has 90 meter Digital Elevation Models ... > Thanks Matt, I have added this one to FreeGIS (it is the 75th entry!). > Matt, is there a link between your 90m DEM data and > the 180 DEM data already in FreeGIS? There is no direct link other than I created both of them. The 180m DEM was generated from an older and more error-prone version of the base data, utilising different software, while I was working for a different organization, and using a *much* slower computer! :) The 180m DEM should be considered an inferior product and is not recommended for use unless you need a DEM at that pixel size and lack the facilities to resample the 90m DEM to ~200 meters. I guess I should add all that to the 180m download page. :) > I have described your license as Public Domain - is that correct? Essentially. It is public domain with a non-binding entreaty to be courteous and responsible in crediting the source: "License Terms The DEMs are free, in both the sense of cost and of liberty. You are free to use these DEMs in any way you see fit including commercial endeavours. It would be courteous to inform us what you are doing with them and to credit the Yukon Renewable Resources Geographic Information System or Yukon RRGIS where applicable." > > And for those who haven't been here already, please take the time > > to visit http://members.home.net/freedata/ and help convince the ... > To my mind this statement is true and can only underline Matts hint. > (Probably all Canadians on this list are already aware of this :-) Thanks for the added emphasis Jan. Cheers and a Happy New Year to All! -matt ======================================== Matt Wilkie * GIS Technician * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/ From lbottorff at harveycounty.com Mon Jan 8 23:16:58 2001 From: lbottorff at harveycounty.com (lbottorff@harveycounty.com) Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 16:16:58 -0600 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion Message-ID: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Hello, We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic question is, can we use something like GRASS? Can we take the work we've done and convert it to GRASS? Is GRASS "vector topology" based? Could be tie in, say, Postgres for data manipulation? We cannot start over from scratch. We must be able to convert what we have. If all of this were possible, what sort of client tools would be available for users (all Windows) to interact with our maps? We're a small rural county (Kreis) in Kansas USA and would like to avoid this yearly ESRI tax. L. Bottorff Harvey County, Kansas lbottorff at harveycounty.com From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Tue Jan 9 10:27:15 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 09:27:15 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com>; from lbottorff@harveycounty.com on Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600 References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Message-ID: <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Hi, On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > Hello, > > We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have > permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and > have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic > question is, can we use something like GRASS? ... why not :-) > Can we take the work we've done and convert it to GRASS? Yes, GRASS accepts ESRI formats (e00, ARCGRID, ungenerate, SHAPE). > Is GRASS "vector topology" based? Yes. However, in GRASS 5.0 it's limited to 2D vectors. Currently GRASS 5.1 is started with a heavily improved vector format. I hope it's available in (late?) spring. > Could be tie in, say, Postgres for data manipulation? Yes, it should as GRASS offers a PostgreSQL and ODBC interface. > We cannot start over from scratch. We must be able to convert what we > have. Sure. > If all of this were possible, what sort of client tools would be > available for users (all Windows) to interact with our maps? We're a small > rural county (Kreis) in Kansas USA and would like to avoid this yearly > ESRI tax. Currently a Windows Port is on the way, the analytical modules are already running, the graphical output roughly since one week. But more time is required to get it stable. You could run GRASS from a LINUX/UNIX-server with X-servers on Windows. Maybe other solutions are there. Hope this helps, Markus Neteler From kevin.rowanet at wanadoo.fr Tue Jan 9 14:32:44 2001 From: kevin.rowanet at wanadoo.fr (kevin.rowanet) Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 14:32:44 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Message-ID: <3A5B12FC.2030803@wanadoo.fr> Hello the list, I am a newbie in the world of GIS, and a bit confused with all what currently exists. Could somebody give me a general survey to compare (and detail connections between, them if any) : GRASS NIMAMUSE FREEGIS (?) GEOTRANS ARCVIEW and co PROJ4 AUTOCAD (for GIS) ADELIE and CARAIBES (Ifremer France) Well... another way of asking that question is: can GRASS do for free all what the others do? In connection with first question, what about all small software to connect GPS with a PC for visualization of movements on a map : can Grass do it ? Thanks a lot. From jan at intevation.de Tue Jan 9 15:20:24 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 15:20:24 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <3A5B12FC.2030803@wanadoo.fr>; from kevin.rowanet@wanadoo.fr on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 02:32:44PM +0100 References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <3A5B12FC.2030803@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: <20010109152024.A8799@abnoba.intevation.de> Dear Kevin, On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 02:32:44PM +0100, kevin.rowanet wrote: > Could somebody give me a general survey to compare (and detail > connections between, them if any) : comaprison if rather difficult if you don't have a specification about what you plan to do. I will give just some hints on what you listed up: > GRASS A full GIS for raster and vector data. This is Free Software. See freegis.org > NIMAMUSE A product of National Imagery and Mapping Agency to work with NIMA Data. No Free Software. > FREEGIS (?) A project to promote Free Software products for GIS. Lists all known Free GIS Software and Free Geo-Data. Links people working and developing Free GIS Software. Your question was asked at FreeGIS :-) FreeGIS is very strict on what is Free and what is not. > GEOTRANS See at freegis.org > ARCVIEW and co Proprietary GIS products by ESRI. > PROJ4 See freegis.org > AUTOCAD (for GIS) Proprietary product. > ADELIE and CARAIBES (Ifremer France) Adelie = Underwater vehicle data post-processing software? At a quick glance I would say it is no Free Software. It is partly an extension of ArcView. > Well... another way of asking that question is: can GRASS do for free > all what the others do? No, of course. There is no software on this world that can do all of what others can do. Probably GRASS can help you in doing what you want to do, but you must specify your needs. Furthermore, it does nothing for free, it is Free Software. Using Software always costs money (at least the staff). But GRASS does not involve license costs if you mean that :-) > In connection with first question, what about all small software to > connect GPS with a PC for visualization of movements on a map : can > Grass do it ? There are some Free Software tools that are able to do that. See freegis.org for them (seach for GPS). They interface one way or another with GRASS. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Tue Jan 9 18:29:36 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 17:29:36 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <862569CF.004DD003.00@mail.harveycounty.com>; from lbottorff@harveycounty.com on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 08:09:54AM -0600 References: <862569CF.004DD003.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Message-ID: <20010109172936.N24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 08:09:54AM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > When I say "client tools" I simply need a way to show the mapping products > to users. Does GRASS have some sort of Web server capability? What about > tcl/tk? It runs natively on Windows. There are several web applications for GRASS available: http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/index2.html -> Links and Screenshots The port to windows is on the way and will include the tcltk-interface. A preliminary version shall be checked into CVS on Tuesday which makes the GRASS monitor running on Cygnus/Win-NT. You must distinguish between the menu system and the graphical output. Latter is pretty difficult to port to Windows. Kind regards Markus Neteler > > Hi, > > On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > > Hello, > > > > We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have > > permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and > > have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic > > question is, can we use something like GRASS? > ... why not :-) > > > Can we take the work we've done and convert it to GRASS? > Yes, GRASS accepts ESRI formats (e00, ARCGRID, ungenerate, SHAPE). > > > Is GRASS "vector topology" based? > Yes. However, in GRASS 5.0 it's limited to 2D vectors. Currently GRASS 5.1 > is started with a heavily improved vector format. I hope it's available > in (late?) spring. > > > Could be tie in, say, Postgres for data manipulation? > Yes, it should as GRASS offers a PostgreSQL and ODBC interface. > > > We cannot start over from scratch. We must be able to convert what we > > have. > Sure. > > > If all of this were possible, what sort of client tools would be > > available for users (all Windows) to interact with our maps? We're a small > > rural county (Kreis) in Kansas USA and would like to avoid this yearly > > ESRI tax. > Currently a Windows Port is on the way, the analytical modules are already > running, the graphical output roughly since one week. But more time is > required to get it stable. > You could run GRASS from a LINUX/UNIX-server with X-servers on Windows. > Maybe other solutions are there. > > Hope this helps, > > Markus Neteler > > _______________________________________________ > Freegis-list mailing list > Freegis-list at intevation.de > http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list > > > > -- Markus Neteler * University of Hannover Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Schneiderberg 50 * D-30167 Hannover * Germany Tel: ++49-(0)511-762-4494 Fax: -3984 From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 9 18:07:44 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 09 Jan 2001 09:07:44 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Message-ID: <20010109170823.ADDCC2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> On 09 Jan 2001 09:27:15 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > > Hello, > > > > We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have > > permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and > > have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic > > question is, can we use something like GRASS? > ... why not :-) Let me first state that I have not used GRASS in a production environment so listen to those who have and take their advice over mine. This is principally a note of caution. The answer to your question is that it depends, and depends especially on three things: 1) the use to which you are putting ArcINFO 8 2) the level of training of the employees using the system 3) the cost of retraining vs the "tax" ArcINFO 8 allows for geographical objects which previous versions did not and I believe GRASS has not yet adopted (CORRECTIONS ANYONE?). If these are the elements you are storing in your database then you are using the most powerful part of the commercial system and you won't be able to convert. If you happen to be using simpler functionality then you could convert but consider: -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is vastly supperior to GRASS's -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is "windows-like" and therefore vastly easier to understand than GRASS's -the integration of ArcINFO 8 with other software will be much easier for the forseeable future. 2) GRASS was built on UNIX systems and still seems to be UNIX like at heart. In this way it is closer to ArcINFO 7.x. If you have been using earlier versions of ArcINFO and are willing to live (or enjoy) a command-line interface then GRASS is a reliable alternative. Do the employees who use the software know UNIX? Are they at least well trained in computers? 3) the transition from one system to another always costs a whole lot. If you have a reliable system up and running it will invariably cost you more to change than to keep paying the "tax". That's why the "tax" works! :-) So my belief and recommendation for your situtation is that you will probably have to pay the tax. HOWEVER, that does not mean that you can't plan to get yourselves away from it. Make yourself or another employee keep an eye on the development of GRASS and other software (like OSSIM). Some of these projects are going really fast now and could quickly become viable alternatives. Try to get a sense of how you are using ArcINFO and what you would need to have as a replacement (in abstract terms such as: we need to run transactions of land-parcels, updated nightly and displayable over the web). Finally, talk to the neighbouring counties. Every county in the country has the same problem as yours. If you could all get together (not ALL but many) and decide to up your tax $1000 a piece for the next couple of years, you could easily pay to have programmers write Free software that served exactly your needs. Talk up the idea with your neighbours and in a few years you may have HarveyCO-GIS. :-) --good luck, adrian From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 9 18:11:54 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 09 Jan 2001 09:11:54 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <20010109152024.A8799@abnoba.intevation.de> References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <3A5B12FC.2030803@wanadoo.fr> <20010109152024.A8799@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010109171233.4BD7E2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Hey all, happy millennium! Given these two recent questions about commercial software, it seems like it would be resonable for the FreeGIS site to give this summary in detail and discuss the realistic difficulties of moving beween systems. As my other post states, I think the costs and efforts are overwhelming so that once you start with one system, you only move if the GIS is tiny or if the benefits are overwhelming. $7000 does not seem overwhelming. Still a well reasoned position on the benefits and costs of commercial systems (quite aside for their closed minded, closed source position) will only benefit the FREE software efforts in the long run. ciao, adrian Jan-Oliver, thanks for all the work you are putting into the list/site. I don't post much but do appreciate your efforts. From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Tue Jan 9 18:15:35 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 09:15:35 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D075308014385@raptor.gov.yk.ca> > > Is GRASS "vector topology" based? > > Yes. However, in GRASS 5.0 it's limited to 2D vectors. No problem there, vectors in Arc are only 2D anyway. :) Elevation values are emulated by attaching a database attribute to the line and populating it with whatever your height is. This is okay for contours, where every point on the line is the same height, but unusable for anything else. -matt ======================================== Matt Wilkie * GIS Technician * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/ From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Tue Jan 9 18:19:31 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 09:19:31 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D075308014393@raptor.gov.yk.ca> > ...question is, can we use something like GRASS? You should also ask the GRASS mailing list directly: grasslist at baylor.edu -matt From lbottorff at harveycounty.com Tue Jan 9 18:42:34 2001 From: lbottorff at harveycounty.com (lbottorff@harveycounty.com) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 11:42:34 -0600 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion Message-ID: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Thanks for the detailed analysis, AC. Actually, we've got the ArcInfo 8 loaded, but we're not using any of the real 8 improvements, i.e., we're just using 7 in 8's clothing. (BTW, as far as we know ArcInfo 8 objects are all but unusable without the $10,000 SDE add-on!) Otherwise, there is no training to be lost, because nobody here has any training! (Maniacal laughter in background...) Previous work was done by a self-taught employee who left before really sharing any expertise. My experience with ArcInfo is minimal and I basically do heads-up corrections on existing parcel maps. Yes, our basic mission is to get parcel data out--probably over the Web. One or two other employees will have to actively use the data to overlay, e.g., a soil map and then calculate the new areas of the different soil types inside a land parcel. That's as far as others will be involved: one or two interactive users doing low-level user stuff, and many others looking (drilling down into) at parcel maps on a Web page or in a Windows app. But doesn't tcl/tk run native on Windows? That's the impression I get from ActiveState ActivePython. Can GRASS (running on Linux) be a server to Windows clients? On 09 Jan 2001 09:27:15 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > > Hello, > > > > We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I have > > permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and > > have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My basic > > question is, can we use something like GRASS? > ... why not :-) Let me first state that I have not used GRASS in a production environment so listen to those who have and take their advice over mine. This is principally a note of caution. The answer to your question is that it depends, and depends especially on three things: 1) the use to which you are putting ArcINFO 8 2) the level of training of the employees using the system 3) the cost of retraining vs the "tax" ArcINFO 8 allows for geographical objects which previous versions did not and I believe GRASS has not yet adopted (CORRECTIONS ANYONE?). If these are the elements you are storing in your database then you are using the most powerful part of the commercial system and you won't be able to convert. If you happen to be using simpler functionality then you could convert but consider: -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is vastly supperior to GRASS's -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is "windows-like" and therefore vastly easier to understand than GRASS's -the integration of ArcINFO 8 with other software will be much easier for the forseeable future. 2) GRASS was built on UNIX systems and still seems to be UNIX like at heart. In this way it is closer to ArcINFO 7.x. If you have been using earlier versions of ArcINFO and are willing to live (or enjoy) a command-line interface then GRASS is a reliable alternative. Do the employees who use the software know UNIX? Are they at least well trained in computers? 3) the transition from one system to another always costs a whole lot. If you have a reliable system up and running it will invariably cost you more to change than to keep paying the "tax". That's why the "tax" works! :-) So my belief and recommendation for your situtation is that you will probably have to pay the tax. HOWEVER, that does not mean that you can't plan to get yourselves away from it. Make yourself or another employee keep an eye on the development of GRASS and other software (like OSSIM). Some of these projects are going really fast now and could quickly become viable alternatives. Try to get a sense of how you are using ArcINFO and what you would need to have as a replacement (in abstract terms such as: we need to run transactions of land-parcels, updated nightly and displayable over the web). Finally, talk to the neighbouring counties. Every county in the country has the same problem as yours. If you could all get together (not ALL but many) and decide to up your tax $1000 a piece for the next couple of years, you could easily pay to have programmers write Free software that served exactly your needs. Talk up the idea with your neighbours and in a few years you may have HarveyCO-GIS. :-) --good luck, adrian From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Tue Jan 9 19:54:17 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 18:54:17 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com>; from lbottorff@harveycounty.com on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 11:42:34AM -0600 References: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Message-ID: <20010109185417.B18059@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 11:42:34AM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > Thanks for the detailed analysis, AC. Actually, we've got the ArcInfo 8 loaded, > but we're not using any of the real 8 improvements, i.e., we're just using 7 in > 8's clothing. (BTW, as far as we know ArcInfo 8 objects are all but unusable > without the $10,000 SDE add-on!) Otherwise, there is no training to be lost, > because nobody here has any training! (Maniacal laughter in background...) > Previous work was done by a self-taught employee who left before really sharing > any expertise. My experience with ArcInfo is minimal and I basically do heads-up > corrections on existing parcel maps. Yes, our basic mission is to get parcel > data out--probably over the Web. One or two other employees will have to > actively use the data to overlay, e.g., a soil map and then calculate the new > areas of the different soil types inside a land parcel. That's as far as others > will be involved: one or two interactive users doing low-level user stuff, and > many others looking (drilling down into) at parcel maps on a Web page or in a > Windows app. But doesn't tcl/tk run native on Windows? That's the impression I > get from ActiveState ActivePython. Can GRASS (running on Linux) be a server to > Windows clients? Perhaps an idea: Why not spending the "proprietary maintenance tax" into such a project like GRASS? That will speed up its development - of course it remains free. Such GRASS-related funded projects are already running, but it could be more. And keep in mind: An open source project is what people make of it. So the GRASS Development Team is open to interested programmers and open to new ideas! Many new features are on the way (like a new GUI, integral database management for vectors etc), but more "staff" is required to finish them. Cheers Markus PS: http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/grassdevel.html > On 09 Jan 2001 09:27:15 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 04:16:58PM -0600, lbottorff at harveycounty.com wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > > > We just got a bill for our ESRI ArcInfo "Maintenance Contract": $7400. I > have > > > permission to investigate alternatives. We currently are using ArcInfo 8 and > > > have developed many megabytes of land parcel maps on their software. My > basic > > > question is, can we use something like GRASS? > > ... why not :-) > > > Let me first state that I have not used GRASS in a production > environment so listen to those who have and take their advice over mine. > This is principally a note of caution. > > The answer to your question is that it depends, and depends especially > on three things: > 1) the use to which you are putting ArcINFO 8 > 2) the level of training of the employees using the system > 3) the cost of retraining vs the "tax" > > ArcINFO 8 allows for geographical objects which previous versions did > not and I believe GRASS has not yet adopted (CORRECTIONS ANYONE?). If > these are the elements you are storing in your database then you are > using the most powerful part of the commercial system and you won't be > able to convert. If you happen to be using simpler functionality then > you could convert but consider: > -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is vastly supperior to > GRASS's > -the graphical user interface of ArcINFO 8 is "windows-like" and > therefore vastly easier to understand than GRASS's > -the integration of ArcINFO 8 with other software will be much easier > for the forseeable future. > > 2) GRASS was built on UNIX systems and still seems to be UNIX like at > heart. In this way it is closer to ArcINFO 7.x. If you have been using > earlier versions of ArcINFO and are willing to live (or enjoy) a > command-line interface then GRASS is a reliable alternative. Do the > employees who use the software know UNIX? Are they at least well trained > in computers? > > 3) the transition from one system to another always costs a whole lot. > If you have a reliable system up and running it will invariably cost you > more to change than to keep paying the "tax". That's why the "tax" > works! :-) > > So my belief and recommendation for your situtation is that you will > probably have to pay the tax. HOWEVER, that does not mean that you can't > plan to get yourselves away from it. Make yourself or another employee > keep an eye on the development of GRASS and other software (like OSSIM). > Some of these projects are going really fast now and could quickly > become viable alternatives. Try to get a sense of how you are using > ArcINFO and what you would need to have as a replacement (in abstract > terms such as: we need to run transactions of land-parcels, updated > nightly and displayable over the web). Finally, talk to the neighbouring > counties. Every county in the country has the same problem as yours. If > you could all get together (not ALL but many) and decide to up your tax > $1000 a piece for the next couple of years, you could easily pay to have > programmers write Free software that served exactly your needs. Talk up > the idea with your neighbours and in a few years you may have > HarveyCO-GIS. :-) > > --good luck, > adrian > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freegis-list mailing list > Freegis-list at intevation.de > http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list -- Markus Neteler * University of Hannover Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Schneiderberg 50 * D-30167 Hannover * Germany Tel: ++49-(0)511-762-4494 Fax: -3984 From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 9 20:20:10 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 09 Jan 2001 11:20:10 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com> Message-ID: <20010109192049.6681C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> On 09 Jan 2001 11:42:34 -0600, wrote: (BTW, as far as we know ArcInfo 8 objects are all but unusable > without the $10,000 SDE add-on!) Ah, that makes more sense to me as far as pricing goes. Otherwise, there is no training to be lost, > because nobody here has any training! (Maniacal laughter in background...) This allows you more flexibility > Previous work was done by a self-taught employee who left before really sharing > any expertise. My experience with ArcInfo is minimal and I basically do heads-up > corrections on existing parcel maps. ArcView doesn't satisfy those needs? Yes, our basic mission is to get parcel > data out--probably over the Web. There are tons of Java based viewers if that's what you want. However, a serious approach to this would require you to put some work into the system. And at that point, the person putting in the work should be able to use Free software. One or two other employees will have to > actively use the data to overlay, e.g., a soil map and then calculate the new > areas of the different soil types inside a land parcel. Classic arcview, just a simple overlay. I suspect GRASS can do this really easily as well. That's as far as others > will be involved: one or two interactive users doing low-level user stuff, and > many others looking (drilling down into) at parcel maps on a Web page or in a > Windows app. But doesn't tcl/tk run native on Windows? That's the impression I > get from ActiveState ActivePython. Can GRASS (running on Linux) be a server to > Windows clients? so it seems you have: -2 users/maintainers doing overlays, both currently semi-trained -many users who want to see maps. Sounds like you could get a GRASS system to do this. The maintainers generate, modify and unpdate parcels. Since they are only two it really doesn't matter what software/os they use (as long as they are willing to learn about computers in general). The more general users should have access to a web server that can take the data and subset it for the location they want. Mr. Netler reffered to some urls that probably have the relevant information. Do consider what your needs will be four years down the road though. A GIS is a "system" meaning that humans will be involved with it and changing it over time. As it becomes more useful, more uses of it arise. --adrian From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 9 20:26:39 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 09 Jan 2001 11:26:39 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] Funding for free projects (was: ArcInfo to Free conversion) In-Reply-To: <20010109185417.B18059@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> References: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109185417.B18059@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Message-ID: <20010109192717.816182211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> On 09 Jan 2001 18:54:17 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > Perhaps an idea: Why not spending the "proprietary maintenance tax" into > such a project like GRASS? That will speed up its development - of course it > remains free. Such GRASS-related funded projects are already running, but it > could be more. > > And keep in mind: An open source project is what people make of it. So the > GRASS Development Team is open to interested programmers and open to new > ideas! Many new features are on the way (like a new GUI, integral database > management for vectors etc), but more "staff" is required to finish them. > > Cheers > > Markus Do you have an explicit policy whereby a group of counties could make an investement in GRASS for functionality it may lack or for modifying the development priorities of the project? I suspect it is much easier for a group to cough up a few thousand dollars than find an employee who could do the work. You would never get them to spend all of the proprietary maintenance tax" on GRASS but perhaps they would give you a contribution if they could show the higher authorities that it was generating software for their specific needs. --adrian From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Tue Jan 9 22:08:20 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 13:08:20 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080146DE@raptor.gov.yk.ca> Adrian, Thank you for your considered and thoughtful post re: conversion from ArcInfo to GRASS. > Given these two recent questions about commercial software, > it seems like it would be resonable for the FreeGIS site to > give this summary in detail and discuss the realistic > difficulties of moving beween systems. A summary web page is a very good idea. I would like to add some more comments on potential difficulties. We have ~2gb of data in ArcInfo formats, 2 core ArcInfo users, 1 or 2 more satellite Arc users, and about 2 dozen ArcView users. The AV users ran the gamut from raving newbies to hard core power users. Although we have Arc8 we are not taking advantage of any of the new technology (buggy,slow & crash prone, not fit for production use). We recently decided to update our core library. After careful planning we budgeted 2 months for the update and roll out. We're now at the 4 month mark and there are still a one or two significant difficulties to overcome. We will be done "Real Soon Now" ;-/ All this for a simple data update and revision. We are not changing file formats, software or technologies. I'm not saying "don't change software", I'm just advising you to think and plan for change carefully. In changing from ArcInfo to GRASS you would encounter a host of unnamed problems with the different approaches the softwares take, *plus* the difficulties inherent in carrying your data over. I've changed GIS platforms twice before and it's *always* more complicated and time consuming than you think. Questions you should think about (in no particular order): * Do you want to keep your map compositions? (eg: published maps) Your clients have come to expect a certain look and feel to your maps. Your hardcopy maps are your "brand name". You want to be able to maintain "your look" with your new software. Can you port the layouts, legends, etc. as well as the base data? * Do you need to keep your projects? A project is more than just the base data. There are also the queries, event themes, layer order and thematic composition (colours,line styles, coloured by attribute, etc.). Usually it is this fiddly work which actually comprises the bulk of your useful information. Can it be ported? * Can/will your users adjust? It's often almost trivial for a power user to adopt a new platform or way of doing things. It is usually exactly the opposite for casual/shallow users who are the majority. Make sure to budget a lot of tech support and training time. * Can the new software actually *do* what you need? Don't take the feature list for granted, investigate. Everybody carries around their own definitions for terms. Make sure yours match or at least be aware of the differences. For example, ArcInfo does not support 3D vectors, though it emulates them well enough for some purposes. Re-reading my post, it sounds as if I'm against the idea, but I'm really not -- I'm hanging around on this list for a reason you know. :) Our ESRI tax consumes a very significant whack of cash every year, but that's not the reason I would like to move us out. Single Vendor Lock-in is the evil. ESRI is spending most of their resources developing the next generation technology. Conceptually it's very elegant and could make vast improvements in how things are done and what is possible. Practically speaking, it's not there yet and won't be for at least 2 more years (IMNSHO). In the meantime the existing products are languishing and won't be fixed or updated unless ESRI is forced to. AML (Arc Macro Language) has some very annoying limitations, but it is somewhat cross platform, working on both Unix and Windows. The limitations will not be addressed because everything is MS-COM and Windows only now. Unix Arc is being phased out as fast as ESRI can make it happen. The thousands of 3rd party Avenue (for ArcView) programs are stuck. Avenue is now a discontinued product and developers have to decide whether to stay with a not-to-be-updated -but-very-large-userbase or not. I'ved suffered through enough discontinued products, thank-you-very-much. A few years ago I calculated out how many hours in the previous 5 years had been spent purely on data translation and software migration: 43%. Yuck. Just think what might have been accomplished with an extra 1000 man hours... Anyway, nuff said, sorry for the rant. As you can tell, I'm a little sore in the subject and I just couldn't help myself. ;-) There's a data migration project calling my name, so I'd better get going... -matt ======================================== Matt Wilkie * GIS Technician * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/ From jan at intevation.de Wed Jan 10 15:46:38 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 15:46:38 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion In-Reply-To: <20010109170823.ADDCC2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>; from acuster@nature.berkeley.edu on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 09:07:44AM -0800 References: <862569CE.007A6782.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109092715.E24290@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <20010109170823.ADDCC2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <20010110154638.A14453@abnoba.intevation.de> On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 09:07:44AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote: > using the most powerful part of the commercial system and you won't be ~~~~~~~~~~ Free Software is commercial as well. It differs of course in the fact that for Free Software only service is to be paid. So you can have e.g. a service contract for GRASS and pay an annual fee. One main advantage of Free Software over proprietary software is the lower total cost of ownership. Usually the final migration to another system is one of the most expensive parts. Migrating away from a proprietary system is usually more expensive than moving away from a Free Software product. Why that? Simply, because a Free Software service company will give you support for the old and the new system - they don't really care whether you change. One the other hand ESRI certainly will not be happy to see you migrating to another system and they will not support it. They will always incorporate feature no other competitor has and recommend you to use the features. A disadvantage that could rise the total cost of ownership is the risk that your proprietary system works well at your company, but the vendor stops supporting version 2 and only maintains version 3 (and the migration is expensive ...!). For a Free Software product you are not forced to migrate to a new release. You buy support to the release you like to use. What I am saying is that for the decision whether to replace a proprietary product there are of course some practical aspects (hi Adrian!), but a long-term planning view must also be considered. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From jan at intevation.de Wed Jan 10 15:57:33 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 15:57:33 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080146DE@raptor.gov.yk.ca>; from Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 01:08:20PM -0800 References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080146DE@raptor.gov.yk.ca> Message-ID: <20010110155733.B14453@abnoba.intevation.de> On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 01:08:20PM -0800, Matt.Wilkie wrote: > > Given these two recent questions about commercial software, > > it seems like it would be resonable for the FreeGIS site to > > give this summary in detail and discuss the realistic > > difficulties of moving beween systems. > > A summary web page is a very good idea. We will add one on FreeGIS. However, we can can not publish a guide on how to migrate from AI8 to GRASS technically. But we can list up some economical and philosophical thought. Some technical pitfalls perhaps. > I would like to add > some more comments on potential difficulties. Perfect story for my previous posting about total cost of ownership! Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From _ at icqmail.com Wed Jan 10 17:09:28 2001 From: _ at icqmail.com (_@icqmail.com) Date: 10 Jan 2001 08:09:28 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] Transportation in GIS Message-ID: <20010110160928.12661.cpmta@c005.sfo.cp.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010110/9cb95717/attachment.txt From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Wed Jan 10 18:16:27 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 10 Jan 2001 09:16:27 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <20010110155733.B14453@abnoba.intevation.de> References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080146DE@raptor.gov.yk.ca> <20010110155733.B14453@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010110171702.289642211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> On 10 Jan 2001 15:57:33 +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote: > On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 01:08:20PM -0800, Matt.Wilkie wrote: > > A summary web page is a very good idea. > > We will add one on FreeGIS. However, we can can not > publish a guide on how to migrate from AI8 to GRASS > technically. But we can list up some economical and > philosophical thought. Some technical pitfalls perhaps. > > > I would like to add > > some more comments on potential difficulties. You might invite comments from groups that have done the transition or have chosen not to. I don't know if there is an easy way for you to do that so it won't take too much of your time. --adrian From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Wed Jan 10 18:40:56 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 09:40:56 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080FDF98@raptor.gov.yk.ca> > > > A summary web page is a very good idea. > > > > We will add one on FreeGIS. However, we can can not > > publish a guide on how to migrate from AI8 to GRASS > > technically. But we can list up some economical and > > philosophical thought. Some technical pitfalls perhaps. > > You might invite comments from groups that have done the transition or > have chosen not to. I don't know if there is an easy way for you to do > that so it won't take too much of your time. The easiest method I can think of, short of adding "comment on this web page" features to the website, is: 1)post a summary of this discussion on the web site 2)invite potential contributors to add to the discussion by using the Freegis-list; recommend a specific subject line. 3)periodically, as traffic warrants, update the webpage. I'll help summarize if needed. -matt ======================================== Matt Wilkie * GIS Technician * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/ From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Wed Jan 10 19:34:11 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 18:34:11 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080FDF98@raptor.gov.yk.ca>; from Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca on Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:40:56AM -0800 References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080FDF98@raptor.gov.yk.ca> Message-ID: <20010110183411.I16760@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:40:56AM -0800, Matt.Wilkie wrote: > > > > A summary web page is a very good idea. > > > > > > We will add one on FreeGIS. However, we can can not > > > publish a guide on how to migrate from AI8 to GRASS > > > technically. But we can list up some economical and > > > philosophical thought. Some technical pitfalls perhaps. > > > > You might invite comments from groups that have done the transition or > > have chosen not to. I don't know if there is an easy way for you to do > > that so it won't take too much of your time. > > The easiest method I can think of, short of adding "comment > on this web page" features to the website, is: > > 1)post a summary of this discussion on the web site > 2)invite potential contributors to add to the discussion > by using the Freegis-list; recommend a specific subject line. > 3)periodically, as traffic warrants, update the webpage. > > I'll help summarize if needed. Hi Matt, such a "message board" (or whatever) would be a good idea for this survey. Maybe we can add another survey: comparison between ARCINFO8, GRASS, MapInfo, ... I am really interested to compare functionality but I am not expert for all systems of course. Markus From bernhard at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 14:46:48 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 14:46:48 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Linux in Science Report mentions FreeGIS Message-ID: <20010111144648.J19086@abnoba.intevation.de> The "Linux in Science Report #6" from the first of January 2001, mentions FreeGIS. http://www.seul.org/sci/seul-sci6.html |FREEGIS - http://freegis.org/ | Last but far from least, I recieved an email from Bernhard Reiter | about the Free GIS portal... | | You might consider linking to the freegis.org project, which | basically tries to be a portal for free software (as in the FSF | sence) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). | | Though not necessarily limited to free software on | GNU/Linux, a lot software runs on GNU/Linux. This is also the | operating system of our choice. | | Kind Regards, | Bernhard Well, it was a while ago that I wrote that email, but it was not forgotten. :) Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010111/b70967be/attachment.bin From epk at netsitemail.com.br Thu Jan 11 13:32:09 2001 From: epk at netsitemail.com.br (Eduardo Patto Kanegae) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:32:09 -0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] MapServer list... Message-ID: <000b01c07bca$84160620$0c61cec8@mpainfo.com.br> hi there does anybody know any mail-list/newsgroup of MapServer with PHP or GDLibrary with PHP? thanks. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010111/0c909d76/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Eduardo Patto Kanegae.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 708 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010111/0c909d76/EduardoPattoKanegae.vcf From silke at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 17:15:06 2001 From: silke at intevation.de (Silke Reimer) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 17:15:06 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] RPM of PROJ4.4.4.2 Message-ID: <20010111171506.B23101@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi Frank and everybody, I just build an RPM of PROJ.4.4.2 and put on our FTP-Site. You can download it from ftp://freegis.org/freegis/gnu-linux-i586/updates/ If you want you can test it and please report me any bugs :-) Ciao Silke ------------------- Intevation GmbH From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 17:25:43 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 17:25:43 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] MapServer list... In-Reply-To: <000b01c07bca$84160620$0c61cec8@mpainfo.com.br>; from epk@netsitemail.com.br on Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 12:32:09PM -0000 References: <000b01c07bca$84160620$0c61cec8@mpainfo.com.br> Message-ID: <20010111172543.B23446@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 12:32:09PM -0000, Eduardo Patto Kanegae wrote: > does anybody know any mail-list/newsgroup of > MapServer with PHP or GDLibrary with PHP? AFAIK there is only one mailing list for MapServer (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/support.html). There you will reach the most experienced guys for the combination of the three tools. Feel free to ask there, the members are very active and usually help with any problem around MapServer. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 17:29:50 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 17:29:50 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Transportation in GIS In-Reply-To: <20010110160928.12661.cpmta@c005.sfo.cp.net>; from _@icqmail.com on Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 08:09:28AM -0800 References: <20010110160928.12661.cpmta@c005.sfo.cp.net> Message-ID: <20010111172950.C23446@abnoba.intevation.de> On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 08:09:28AM -0800, _ at icqmail.com wrote: > I am searching for a GIS programme for City traffic analyses&transportation routing&network analyses&Simulations .. I would like to learn your favorites, reccomands and your preferences about that subject... it is unlikely to find a tools that directly suffices your needs. You will have to configure or even combine tools that are for general purposes. However, you should try to specify your needs mor detailed in search for the right tool. Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 17:34:27 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 17:34:27 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] survey for a newbie In-Reply-To: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080FDF98@raptor.gov.yk.ca>; from Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca on Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:40:56AM -0800 References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D0753080FDF98@raptor.gov.yk.ca> Message-ID: <20010111173427.A23646@abnoba.intevation.de> On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:40:56AM -0800, Matt.Wilkie wrote: > The easiest method I can think of, short of adding "comment > on this web page" features to the website, is: > > 1)post a summary of this discussion on the web site > 2)invite potential contributors to add to the discussion > by using the Freegis-list; recommend a specific subject line. > 3)periodically, as traffic warrants, update the webpage. I was thinking on something like this. > I'll help summarize if needed. that would be great! I'll come back to you when I have sorted things out (improvements on the FreeGIS pages are planned anyway). Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From bernhard at intevation.de Thu Jan 11 17:56:35 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 17:56:35 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Funding for free projects (was: ArcInfo to Free conversion) In-Reply-To: <20010109192717.816182211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>; from acuster@nature.berkeley.edu on Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 11:26:39AM -0800 References: <862569CF.00614865.00@mail.harveycounty.com> <20010109185417.B18059@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <20010109192717.816182211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <20010111175635.A23682@abnoba.intevation.de> On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 11:26:39AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote: > On 09 Jan 2001 18:54:17 +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > > Perhaps an idea: Why not spending the "proprietary maintenance tax" into > > such a project like GRASS? That will speed up its development - of course it > > remains free. Such GRASS-related funded projects are already running, but it > > could be more. > Do you have an explicit policy whereby a group of counties could make an > investement in GRASS for functionality it may lack or for modifying the > development priorities of the project? Best is always to hire somebody to actually add the functionality you need. Students who are interested in GRASS anyway are often happy to get some funding for their hobby. You can also hire professionals. To give you some examples Frank Warmerdam was hired a couple of times for geospatial programming and created free software add ons for GRASS. Sometimes these were by-products and sometimes the main product. ImageLinks sponsors a OSSIM GRASS bridge and hired Frank Warmerdam and Intevation (us!) for doing the job through SourceExchange. > I suspect it is much easier for a group to cough up a few thousand > dollars than find an employee who could do the work. True, SourceExchange or CoSource http://www.sourcexchange.org/ http://www.cosource.com/ might be place were you can write and fund special requests. > You would never get them to spend all of the proprietary > maintenance tax" on GRASS but perhaps they would give you a > contribution if they could show the higher authorities that it was > generating software for their specific needs. Some foundations accept smaller donation, but basically will put them to general use for free software. Buying FreeGIS CD also helps us to keep the project alive of course. :) Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010111/2136daf1/attachment.bin From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Thu Jan 11 19:09:34 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 11 Jan 2001 10:09:34 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING Message-ID: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> They just sent me a note and I looked quickly on the web site but didn't see SPRING listed. If it is sorry to bother. SPRING is a freeware GIS based in Brazil (closed source). I never used it but I have intended to. See: http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/ unless your portugeese is up to par. :-) If it's good we might start lobbying them to open their source. ciao, adrian -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010111/36724a77/attachment.html From cfasshauer at web.de Thu Jan 11 22:28:07 2001 From: cfasshauer at web.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q? Cornelius=20=20Fa=DFhauer ?=) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 22:28:07 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Free GIS for sewerage and water-supply Message-ID: <200101112128.WAA24473@mailgate3.cinetic.de> Hi folks, Does anybody know something about the existence of special GIS-applications for the management of sewer and/or water-supply nets?? Or is anybody concerned with designing some?? I would like to know and possibly contribute to further development. ______________________________________________________________________________ Die Fachpresse ist sich einig: WEB.DE 15mal Testsieger! Kostenlos E-Mail, Fax, SMS, Verschl?sselung, POP3, WAP....testen Sie uns! http://freemail.web.de From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 12 09:22:13 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:22:13 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Free GIS for sewerage and water-supply In-Reply-To: <200101112128.WAA24473@mailgate3.cinetic.de>; from cfasshauer@web.de on Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:28:07PM +0100 References: <200101112128.WAA24473@mailgate3.cinetic.de> Message-ID: <20010112092213.C26288@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:28:07PM +0100, Cornelius Fa?hauer wrote: > Does anybody know something about the existence of special GIS-applications for the management of sewer and/or water-supply nets?? Or is anybody concerned with designing some?? I would like to know and possibly contribute to further development. such can be very sophisticated applications. I am not aware of a solution for this based on Free Software (but this doesn't mean there is none). Some Free GIS products might be a good point to start, but you should specify your needs quite detailed to select one that serves best. You definitely need a vector-based application. If you want to realize complex operations on the networks, you need an application that can handle topologic information. Thats all I can say for the moment. Other comments? Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 12 09:40:26 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 09:40:26 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING In-Reply-To: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>; from acuster@nature.berkeley.edu on Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:09:34AM -0800 References: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <20010112094026.A26436@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:09:34AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote: > They just sent me a note and I looked quickly on the web site but didn't > see SPRING listed. If it is sorry to bother. > > > SPRING is a freeware GIS based in Brazil (closed source). I never > used it but I have intended to. See: > > http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/ > > unless your portugeese is up to par. :-) If it's good we might start > lobbying them to open their source. due to a hint my Matt in October 1999 we contacted the SPRING people and argued to make SPRING Free Software since there seems no actual reason why they shouldn't. The developers like the idea, but they more or less say that the legal department does not allow it. Strange, since legal departments are paid to help you in your business (and realise your ideas). You don't pay them to rule you (we observed this for many organizations (companies as well as other instituitions). Since October 1999 we exchanged many emails with the SPRING developers. However, many more seem to be required to finally reach the goal. Perhaps it is helpful if more requests from different parties ask for making SPRING Free Software. SPRING is definitely worth the efford! The SPRING developers are on our side so give them more requests and arguments for their bosses. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From bernhard at intevation.de Fri Jan 12 20:49:56 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:49:56 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Mapserver Workbench Message-ID: <20010112204956.N27763@abnoba.intevation.de> This post on the grass list seems to be interesting, because of the Mapserver Workbench. From its homepage it says: A set of cooperative tools for development of MapServer web mapping applications. The screenshots are impressive. License is LGPL. Sourceforge page up since Jan 11. Free Software RuleZ! Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Tom Poindexter Subject: [GRASSLIST:1359] Re: Web Mapping Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 12:25:05 -0700 Size: 2742 Url: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010112/7555ad2c/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010112/7555ad2c/attachment.bin From fnievinski at cpovo.net Sat Jan 13 02:48:23 2001 From: fnievinski at cpovo.net (Felipe G. Nievinski) Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 23:48:23 -0200 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING References: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> <20010112094026.A26436@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe> Hi all. I'm from Brazil, and I've been using SPRING in the last year (for a few projects), since I met some people from INPE (Brazil's National Institute for Space Research) during GeoInfo 2000 (Brazilian Workshop on GeoInformatics), last june in Sao Paulo. I like very much its high-level approach, mainly because it's fully object-oriented and it has an user-friendly graphical interface. Though it isn't a Free Software, I think it can be explored, just because it is a good software, helping us to make better softwares. I think projects like FMaps can gain a lot with it - it seems both projects' objectives are very similar: from SPRING's website: "SPRING is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. " from FMaps' website: "FMaps is here to answer the lack of user friendly opensource GIS/RS (Geographic Information System/ Remote Sensing) application on the Linux and Gnome compatible platforms." I'm planning to be in GeoInfo 2001, and I will try to persuade them to open the source code of SPRING and make it a free software. I believe that writing a petition, explaining the very basics of Free software and showing that everyone will win with it (win-win), no one lawyer will say that it cannot be done, considering it is a product from a public institution. (Maybe I will need a help to write this petition/letter.) But first, I would like to know your opinions about SPRING. I know it has some bugs, though I never bumped into any. Another project from INPE that can be helpful to the Free GIS community is TerraLib: http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/geoinfo2000/anais/019.pdf This work describes the development of a new GIS library (called TerraLib), that is aimed at providing a rich and powerful environment for the development of GIScience research. The motivation for this proposal is the current lack of either public or commercial GIS libraries that cater for the diversity of GIS data and algorithms, especially when viewed upon the latest advances in geographical information science. TerraLib is open source software, allowing a collaborative environment and its use for the development of multiple GIS tools. (it is under development) just my 2 cents Regards, Felipe Nievinski. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan-Oliver Wagner" To: Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 6:40 AM Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING > On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:09:34AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote: > > They just sent me a note and I looked quickly on the web site but didn't > > see SPRING listed. If it is sorry to bother. > > > > > > SPRING is a freeware GIS based in Brazil (closed source). I never > > used it but I have intended to. See: > > > > http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/ > > > > unless your portugeese is up to par. :-) If it's good we might start > > lobbying them to open their source. > > due to a hint my Matt in October 1999 we contacted the SPRING > people and argued to make SPRING Free Software since > there seems no actual reason why they shouldn't. > > The developers like the idea, but they more or less say > that the legal department does not allow it. > Strange, since legal departments are paid to help > you in your business (and realise your ideas). > You don't pay them to rule you (we observed this > for many organizations (companies as well as other > instituitions). > > Since October 1999 we exchanged many emails with the > SPRING developers. > However, many more seem to be required > to finally reach the goal. Perhaps it is helpful > if more requests from different parties ask for > making SPRING Free Software. > SPRING is definitely worth the efford! > The SPRING developers are on our side so give > them more requests and arguments for their bosses. > > Cheers > > Jan > > -- > Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ > > Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ > FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > Freegis-list mailing list > Freegis-list at intevation.de > http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list > From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Sat Jan 13 20:02:20 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 13 Jan 2001 11:02:20 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING In-Reply-To: <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe> References: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> <20010112094026.A26436@abnoba.intevation.de> <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe> Message-ID: <20010113190244.41D152211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Thanks for the note. On 12 Jan 2001 23:48:23 -0200, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote: > I believe that > writing a petition, explaining the very basics of Free software and showing > that everyone will win with it (win-win), no one lawyer will say that it > cannot be done, considering it is a product from a public institution. > (Maybe I will need a help to write this petition/letter.) This last argument might have a big effect if you can start working up public opinion. The notion in the US that government efforts are *already* owned by the public has completely changed our access to code and data. I don't know how deeply entrenched in brazilian law is the alternative vision (I'll ask around) but pressure from brailian citizens could work wonders. Also you might stress that if they Free the code, people might seriously start contributing to their project. Write the letter, I'll sign it! :-) --adrian From Setepenaset at aol.com Sun Jan 14 17:05:31 2001 From: Setepenaset at aol.com (Setepenaset@aol.com) Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 11:05:31 EST Subject: [Freegis-list] subscribe Freegis-list Message-ID: <2b.fac7de5.2793284b@aol.com> From jan at intevation.de Mon Jan 15 10:38:18 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 10:38:18 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING In-Reply-To: <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe>; from fnievinski@cpovo.net on Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 11:48:23PM -0200 References: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> <20010112094026.A26436@abnoba.intevation.de> <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe> Message-ID: <20010115103818.B3265@abnoba.intevation.de> On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 11:48:23PM -0200, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote: > I'm planning to be in GeoInfo 2001, and I will try to persuade them to open > the source code of SPRING and make it a free software. I believe that > writing a petition, explaining the very basics of Free software and showing > that everyone will win with it (win-win), no one lawyer will say that it > cannot be done, considering it is a product from a public institution. > (Maybe I will need a help to write this petition/letter.) talking to the people is worth a lot! Good to hear that you have the oppportunity to be there and perhaps meet the SPRING people. > Another project from INPE that can be helpful to the Free GIS community is > TerraLib: > http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/geoinfo2000/anais/019.pdf > This work describes the development of a new GIS library (called TerraLib), > that is > aimed at providing a rich and powerful environment for the development of > GIScience research. > The motivation for this proposal is the current lack of either public or > commercial GIS libraries > that cater for the diversity of GIS data and algorithms, especially when > viewed upon the latest > advances in geographical information science. TerraLib is open source > software, allowing a > collaborative environment and its use for the development of multiple GIS > tools. > (it is under development) I have the feeling that currently too many projects try to invent GIS structures anew. There are many wheels out there, lets now improve the rest of the vehicle. I will ask the TerraLib people whether they like to link to existing Free Software products and approach a joined efford. Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From bernhard at intevation.de Mon Jan 15 11:22:10 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:22:10 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] The Brazilian freeware GIS SPRING In-Reply-To: <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe>; from fnievinski@cpovo.net on Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 11:48:23PM -0200 References: <20010111181005.77E4C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> <20010112094026.A26436@abnoba.intevation.de> <03fa01c07d02$e9ef3af0$0f0110ac@felipe> Message-ID: <20010115112210.E3416@abnoba.intevation.de> On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 11:48:23PM -0200, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote: > But first, I would like to know your opinions about SPRING. I know it has > some bugs, though I never bumped into any. You are certainly right, that we might learn from SPRING. However with it not being free software it never went up my stack of geographic software to try out high enough, because there is so much interesting free software around. Your petition is really a good idea! Bernhard -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010115/eedb30e6/attachment.bin From spatialhydrology at hotmail.com Tue Jan 16 02:30:45 2001 From: spatialhydrology at hotmail.com (Ashok Verma) Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:30:45 -0500 Subject: [Freegis-list] Journal of Spatial Hydrology (JOSH) Electronic Peer Review Series Message-ID: Dear list members: We are currently in the process of establishing an electronic peer review publication series: the Journal of Spatial Hydrology (JOSH: ISSN: 1530-4736). We are pleased to invite you to join this endeavor as an editor/peer reviewer. Your acceptance as a reviewer will require reviewing approximately 2 or 3 articles per year. If you are interested in becoming a member of the newly formed peer review committee for this innovative electronic journal, please fill out an application form at http://www.spatialhydrology.com/journal/editor_reviwer.htm If you are unable to become part of the peer-review committee, please nominate a colleague or associate from your department to become part of the committee by sending their name, phone number and email address to: Journal of Spatial Hydrology (JOSH) 223 Columbia Dr. #201 Cape Canaveral, FL 32920 USA Phone: 1-321-783-5895 Fax: 1-507-260-4779 E-mail: josh at spatialhydrology.com URL - http://www.spatialhydrology.com/journal/ We look forward to your reply and participation in the Journal of Spatial Hydrology (JOSH) electronic peer review publication series. Yours Sincerely, Ashok Verma Principal Investigator Spatial Hydrology http://www.spatialhydrology.com _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From jan at intevation.de Tue Jan 16 10:02:01 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:02:01 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] FreeGIS updates Message-ID: <20010116100201.A18861@abnoba.intevation.de> Hello list, just two updates to report: A new revision of MapServer Workbench has been released. MapServer Workbench has also moved to SourceForge. All MapServer admins should have a look on this tool. MapServer Workbench is a suite of cooperative tools to build MapServer interface. Version: 0.3 License: LGPL A new converter for Waypoint+ GPS data to shapefiles: wayp2shp A simple C-Program which can read a Waypoint+ file. The data in this file will be converted to shapefile format. Version: 1.0 License: GPL Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From silke at intevation.de Thu Jan 18 16:35:43 2001 From: silke at intevation.de (Silke Reimer) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 16:35:43 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] New RPMs for FreeGis In-Reply-To: <20010116100201.A18861@abnoba.intevation.de>; from jan@intevation.de on Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 10:02:01AM +0100 References: <20010116100201.A18861@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010118163543.B29924@abnoba.intevation.de> Hello list! Good news: I just build 2 new RPM packages. So you can now download tkgeomap Version 1.4.1 (a set of Xlib-extensions of Tcl/Tk) and GMT Version 3.3.6 (without the new GMT scipts) from the FreeGIS.org ftp-site: ftp://www.freegis.org/freegis/gnu-linux-i586/updates/ Have a lot of fun and please report me any problems. Ciao Silke From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Thu Jan 18 18:06:17 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 17:06:17 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! Message-ID: <20010118170617.E9891@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Hi all, this mail may concern to German GIS users and neighbouring countries. The German governmental GIS data are kept in two major formats: - ATKIS to store geometrical and usage information in vector format (land use, streets, water, forest whatever) - ALK to store cadastral data Other countries have their own formats (I think it's comparing but different to SDTS). So - the problem: The EDBS format is public, but there is no free converter to read it and convert to a common GIS format. However, the governmental institutions offer simply: - to export DXF format: then you don't get the attribute tables (ha!) - to export in EDBS ("it's your problem to convert these data") This is somewhat not satifying. There is a ATKIS-SHAPE converter available for free download (AvATKIS), but it doesn't convert properly. The ESR* company offers a converter as well for some kilo-Euro. My wish is to find someone to write an open source GPL'ed (or whatever) EDBS-EOO or EDBS-SHAPE converter (E00 preferred as it keeps topology). Of course these formats are proprietary, too, but they are very common. Other suggestions are welcome. Generally you have the vector data in several layers ("Folien"). There is a polygon section, a lines, a points and a text strings section. These text strings are the map texts like city, street names whatever which is printed on the map. Mostly interesting are polygons, lines and points with their attribute tables. The EDBS (Einheitliche Datenbank-Schnittstelle) is described here: www.atkis.de http://www.gismngt.de/format/edbs1.htm It is an ASCII format. Hopefully we can find either a volunteer to program this converter (E00 write routines can be found in GRASS/v.out.e00, C-language, maybe I could get EDBS import routines in JAVA). Or we can collect some money to ask a company which is interested in open source computing (I already have an idea :-), but this will be more complicated. So far my ideas, EDBS is really annoying, but we have to live with EDBS... Markus -- Markus Neteler * University of Hannover Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Schneiderberg 50 * D-30167 Hannover * Germany Tel: ++49-(0)511-762-4494 Fax: -3984 From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 18 18:35:22 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 18:35:22 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: <20010118170617.E9891@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de>; from neteler@geog.uni-hannover.de on Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 05:06:17PM +0000 References: <20010118170617.E9891@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Message-ID: <20010118183522.A32608@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 05:06:17PM +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > Generally you have the vector data in several layers ("Folien"). > There is a polygon section, a lines, a points and a text strings section. > These text strings are the map texts like city, street names whatever > which is printed on the map. Mostly interesting are polygons, lines > and points with their attribute tables. > > The EDBS (Einheitliche Datenbank-Schnittstelle) is described EDBS has a problem: E=einheitliche=unified is simply not true for EDBS data from different authorities in Germany. This it is not just a converter as many others. There is the need to check back with several authorities to learn about their interpretation of EDBS. It is likely that we can develop a base converter and then adjust/add everything we learn/detect. A perfect job for the Free Software development model :-) To my mind the development of a EDBS converter needs a base funding to have a (at least partially) working program. It will generate interest and further support to complete work. My estimnate is that you need 3-4 man month to establish a base converter. BTW, you need data to test. Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From Pzitta at amtengineering.com Thu Jan 18 19:21:16 2001 From: Pzitta at amtengineering.com (Zitta, Peter) Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 13:21:16 -0500 Subject: [Freegis-list] Spatial Analyst Message-ID: Hello, Does anyone know if ESRI's SPATIAL ANALYST 2.0 is freeware or has a copy of it? Thanks, Pete -- Pete Z. http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ _______________________________________________ Freegis-list mailing list Freegis-list at intevation.de http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list From bernhard at intevation.de Fri Jan 19 00:03:22 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 00:03:22 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Spatial Analyst In-Reply-To: ; from Pzitta@amtengineering.com on Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 01:21:16PM -0500 References: Message-ID: <20010119000322.A1540@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 01:21:16PM -0500, Zitta, Peter wrote: > Does anyone know if ESRI's SPATIAL ANALYST 2.0 > is freeware or has a copy of it? This list is about Free Software and GIS. I do not know any Free Software by ESRI. Spatial Analyst is not free software. > Pete Pete: Please pay attention to your MUA quoting mechanism. You used Jan's signature with your name. > -- > Pete Z. http://intevation.de/~jan/ > > Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ > FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ Cheers, Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010119/1e151ae9/attachment.bin From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 19 07:34:26 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 07:34:26 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] FreeGIS CD update: MapIt RPM Message-ID: <20010119073426.A2247@abnoba.intevation.de> I have just copied the MapIt! 0.9 rpm to ftp://www.freegis.org/freegis/gnu-linux-i586/updates/ MapIt! needs python and PIL. The latter can be a bit tricky. If you have PIL 1.1.1 installed, then use --no-deps for mapit. If you don't have try the python-imaging rpm which is in the same directory as the mapit rpm. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From andreas1199 at hotmail.com Fri Jan 19 09:10:32 2001 From: andreas1199 at hotmail.com (Andreas H) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 09:10:32 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! Message-ID: Hi, what you describe is exactly what i have planed for a student work in my firm over the next month. The goal was to develop a converter for MIF and SHP as target. But I'm not sure if we do this, because of the following problems: - the EDBS-data is not public available, it is very expensive and so there are not much user - because of the copyright I thinks it's not easy to get sample data - we have the official documentation, but we can't found any information about the differences or internal changes there was made - I think the "Landesvermessungsverwaltungen" are not cooperative to get insights in the format My main question is: How usefull is a free converter for only restricted available data???? Yours Andreas Haensel _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 19 11:13:41 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 11:13:41 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: ; from andreas1199@hotmail.com on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:10:32AM +0000 References: Message-ID: <20010119111341.A3020@abnoba.intevation.de> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:10:32AM +0000, Andreas H wrote: > what you describe is exactly what i have planed for a student work in my > firm over the next month. The goal was to develop a converter for MIF and > SHP as target. that sounds good. > But I'm not sure if we do this, because of the following problems: > - the EDBS-data is not public available, it is very expensive and so there > are not much user if users are interested in ability to read the format it is reason enough to develop this software. > - because of the copyright I thinks it's not easy to get sample data true. The development should take place where EDBS data are available and should link to people with other EDBS for testing. I am able to test a EDBS converter with huge data sets of lower saxonia. > - we have the official documentation, but we can't found any information > about the differences or internal changes there was made exactly. to some extent reverse engeneering is required. > - I think the "Landesvermessungsverwaltungen" are not cooperative to get > insights in the format a matter of motivation. I think we could contact and convince some people of the authorities. > My main question is: > How usefull is a free converter for only restricted available data???? it is very useful. * it will make Free GIS Software such as GRASS more attractive for those who need to work with EDBS. * it will generate awareness of Free GIS Software in general Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Fri Jan 19 12:49:53 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 11:49:53 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: <20010119111341.A3020@abnoba.intevation.de>; from jan@intevation.de on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 11:13:41AM +0100 References: <20010119111341.A3020@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010119114953.D11797@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 11:13:41AM +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote: > On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:10:32AM +0000, Andreas H wrote: [...] Thanks for your comments and your offer, Andreas! > > My main question is: > > How usefull is a free converter for only restricted available data???? > > it is very useful. > > * it will make Free GIS Software such as GRASS more attractive for those > who need to work with EDBS. Short sidenote on GRASS: I have written a script "v.in.edbs_shape" which allows to separate the SHAPE-files (resulting from the proprietary EDBS converters) into the map layers ("folien"). Works nice :-) and needs the current v.in.shape from David Gray (find in GRASS CVS). So "simply" the EDSB-SHAPE converter is missing... > * it will generate awareness of Free GIS Software in general I agree! This would be another reason to convince people, regards Markus From andreas1199 at hotmail.com Fri Jan 19 13:29:34 2001 From: andreas1199 at hotmail.com (Andreas H) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 13:29:34 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! Message-ID: Hi, > > My main question is: > > How usefull is a free converter for only restricted available data???? > >it is very useful. >* it will make Free GIS Software such as GRASS more attractive for >those >who need to work with EDBS. >* it will generate awareness of Free GIS Software in general I definitive want to support this. But I'm a little bit careful with this converter. Not every who want's to contribute or use it, can do this, because of the restricted data. This is not the meaning of "Open". But this is only a comment, the reasons are: We developed a prototype in Perl. This decision was not so good, because it took some month and to convert a simple "TK-Blatt" it needs hours. On the other side I also know the free converter AvAtkis and we had no or little problems with it. I think it's an alternative. What are your problems with it? How about contacting the authors? Yours Andreas Haensel _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Fri Jan 19 15:26:45 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 14:26:45 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: ; from andreas1199@hotmail.com on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 01:29:34PM +0000 References: Message-ID: <20010119142645.J11797@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Hi Andreas, On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 01:29:34PM +0000, Andreas H wrote: > Hi, > > > > My main question is: > > > How usefull is a free converter for only restricted available data???? > > > >it is very useful. > >* it will make Free GIS Software such as GRASS more attractive for >those > >who need to work with EDBS. > >* it will generate awareness of Free GIS Software in general > > I definitive want to support this. But I'm a little bit careful with this > converter. Not every who want's to contribute or use it, can do this, > because of the restricted data. This is not the meaning of "Open". > But this is only a comment, the reasons are: > We developed a prototype in Perl. This decision was not so good, because it > took some month and to convert a simple "TK-Blatt" it needs hours. > On the other side I also know the free converter AvAtkis and we had no or > little problems with it. I think it's an alternative. > What are your problems with it? How about contacting the authors? Well, the AvAtkis converted only 5% of the ids (OBJEKTART). Like that the result is fully unusable... Maybe that's intended so that we buy the AvAtkis Professional version? No idea. However, I would prefer an open source converter. The LGN in Hannover told me, that they don't have a problem with that. Markus From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 19 15:01:33 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 15:01:33 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: ; from andreas1199@hotmail.com on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 01:29:34PM +0000 References: Message-ID: <20010119150133.A4473@abnoba.intevation.de> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 01:29:34PM +0000, Andreas H wrote: > We developed a prototype in Perl. This decision was not so good, because it > took some month and to convert a simple "TK-Blatt" it needs hours. Will you publish this prototype as Free Software? at least it would help to learn. > On the other side I also know the free converter AvAtkis and we had no or > little problems with it. I think it's an alternative. > What are your problems with it? How about contacting the authors? This tool is just "for free". No source codes. You definitely will no be able to convince the authors to release the tool as Free Software, because their business model is to leave out some functions in the gratis tool and sell a "Professional" version for some N KiloEuro. If they would release the incomplete version as Free Software, we would soon complete the tool :-) and they would not be able to sell licenses anymore. There are chances that there will be a C implementation released soon. The author agreed in principle. Will keep you informed. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de Fri Jan 19 17:01:34 2001 From: neteler at geog.uni-hannover.de (Markus Neteler) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 16:01:34 +0000 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: <20010118183522.A32608@abnoba.intevation.de>; from jan@intevation.de on Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 06:35:22PM +0100 References: <20010118170617.E9891@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <20010118183522.A32608@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010119160133.F17722@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Hi again on EDBS, for the english (only) readers: I have found an URL related to EDBS in English: http://sunspot.sli.unimelb.edu.au/research/publications/IPW/Hesse93ATKIS.htm Little bit outdated, but you might get an idea. Jan, I keep fingers crossed! Markus From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 19 17:05:00 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 17:05:00 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] EDBS/ATKIS to some useful GIS-format converter wanted! In-Reply-To: <20010119160133.F17722@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de>; from neteler@geog.uni-hannover.de on Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 04:01:34PM +0000 References: <20010118170617.E9891@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> <20010118183522.A32608@abnoba.intevation.de> <20010119160133.F17722@hgeo02.geog.uni-hannover.de> Message-ID: <20010119170500.C5577@abnoba.intevation.de> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 04:01:34PM +0000, Markus Neteler wrote: > Jan, I keep fingers crossed! I now have edbs reader C source code, but currently no idea how much of the format definition is covered. I still need to have contact with the author to release this code as Free Software (btw, please try to not term open source). Once that is OK, we would need people to rework the stuff and prepare it eg. for GRASS. One problem: the code is commented in German and uses German variable names :-( So a team might be needed with one German speaker. Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From gilberto at dpi.inpe.br Sat Jan 20 01:48:45 2001 From: gilberto at dpi.inpe.br (Gilberto Camara) Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 03:48:45 +0300 (EDT) Subject: [Freegis-list] SPRING GIS software Message-ID: <1291.200.227.172.98.979969725.squirrel@www.dpi.inpe.br> Dear FreeGIS fellows: A recent thread on FreeGIS-list which discusses the availability of the SPRING source code has been brought to our attention, and I would like to clarify some issues. First, we are extremely supportive of the FreeGIS effort and free software in general. That said, why don?t we simply put SPRING on the web as source code? As a starting point, there are legal problems which we haven?t been able to sort out. But these are not the only ones. Putting software on the web, on whatever form, implies an enormous responsibility on the part of the producer. It does not matter if no formal warranty is given, the individual or the institution need to act in a responsible fashion. If people use your software for anything, you?d better provide quality, or else your reputation will be compromised. SPRING is a very large software product, with hundreds of functions, and 500.000+ lines of C++ code, produced over a period of a decade, by a large team (more than 100 man-years, at my last count). The project did not begin as a free software effort, but rather as an integrated GIS+IP freeware product for the Brazilian and Latin American users. More than 10,000 people worldwide have downloaded SPRING, and we have a strong commitment to SPRING as a full GIS product, capable of supporting real-life projects, and we have a significant number of real-world users. Making SPRING available as open source on the web would require a major effort by our team in terms of documentation, and further effort in terms of supporting fellow code developers. These commitments are outside of our current capacity. We have given priority to supporting users of SPRING, producing enhanced versions, correcting bugs, generating user documentation, preparing training courses and maintaining the same code running on Windows, Linux and Solaris. These activities keep a lot of us busy all the time. Therefore, SPRING-product has, for us, a much higher priority that SPRING-open source. I hope you appreciate the difference. Taking everything into account, we have taken the option of using our experience with SPRING to design a product that?s meant to be open source. That product is called TERRALIB, whose first version will be made available on-line sometime in 2001. Our aims in TERRALIB is to build a library for GIS software development, and our next-generation GIS products will be built using it. All of you that develop and maintain open source code know how much effort is involved. Therefore, I hope you will appreciate your cautious approach, which is aimed at only making commitments that we can maintain. Regards, Gilberto Camara Co-ordinator for R&D in GIS National Institute for Space Research (INPE) From bernhard at intevation.de Sat Jan 20 20:49:56 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 20:49:56 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] SPRING GIS software In-Reply-To: <1291.200.227.172.98.979969725.squirrel@www.dpi.inpe.br>; from gilberto@dpi.inpe.br on Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 03:48:45AM +0300 References: <1291.200.227.172.98.979969725.squirrel@www.dpi.inpe.br> Message-ID: <20010120204956.A9952@abnoba.intevation.de> Hallo Gilberto, thanks for your clarifications about the status of SPRING and why it is not free software. On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 03:48:45AM +0300, Gilberto Camara wrote: > First, we are extremely supportive > of the FreeGIS effort and free software > in general. That said, > why don?t we simply put SPRING on the > web as source code? > As a starting point, there are legal > problems which we haven?t been able > to sort out. But these are not the only ones. Can you be more specific on the problem? Maybe someone can help or offer advice. > Putting software on the web, on whatever > form, implies an enormous responsibility > on the part of the producer. I fail to see why publishing the source code would raise the level of responsibility of SPRING's producers. > SPRING is a very large software product, with > hundreds of functions, and 500.000+ lines of > C++ code, > Making SPRING available as open source on the web > would require a major effort by our team in terms > of documentation, and further effort in terms of supporting > fellow code developers. These commitments are > outside of our current capacity. If the current product is working, I do not see why you should be ashame of your source code or the documentation. On the other hand, if you publish the source code, maybe other developers will join and help. There is no guarentee for it of course. > Therefore, SPRING-product has, for us, > a much higher priority that SPRING-open source. > I hope you appreciate the difference. With the bottleneck of your development team and the lack of software freedom, I can see that SPRING might have an unnecessary hard time in the future. > Taking everything into account, we have taken the > option of using our experience with SPRING to design > a product that?s meant to be open source. That > product is called TERRALIB, whose first version will > be made available on-line sometime in 2001. Great! Is the development process open to review as with a lot of free software projects? Best, Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010120/209738b7/attachment.bin From bernhard at intevation.de Sun Jan 21 00:49:51 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 00:49:51 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] gpspoint (new entry) Message-ID: <20010121004951.A10742@abnoba.intevation.de> A link to gpspoint has been added the the freegis.org list. Program to download and upload waypoints, routes, and tracks to and from your GPS device. Upload and download is possible via the GARMIN interface. Current position obtainable via the NMEA Interface, supported by most GPS devices. Version: 1.010112 License: GPL -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010121/f65cf111/attachment.bin From bernhard at intevation.de Sun Jan 21 15:56:25 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 15:56:25 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] iGMT licensing Message-ID: <20010121155625.A13203@abnoba.intevation.de> Hello Alexander, (I write in English, because you might want to send this mail to Thorsten. And I also send a carbon copy to the freegis-list.) Being with the FreeGIS.org project you might know me and I enjoy IGMT a lot. There are two issues which I noticed today: * You might want to adopt a better version number scheme. People are using your development versions for iGMT1.2, but the source code archive is always called the same. This welcomes confusion about the version used. The version on the freegis cd for example is called 1.2, but it is probably less recent than your latest development version. You could simply add the date to your snapshot, so call the latest development version igmt_v1.2-20002710.tar.gz or igmt_v1.2pre2.tar.gz or something. * You have changed the licence from GPL to GPL with an addition which reads as following: | In addition, iGMT is not to be used for any military purposes or for | any other activities that are against the spirit as expressed in the | Student Pugwash Pledge (www.spusa.org/pugwash/pledge.html). I am a bit worried, because this renders iGMT non-free software to be strict. I agree with your political goals stated in the Pledge, but freedom of software cannot depend on much more political strings than its freedom. Here are the commonly accepted guidelines for free software, which you are violating with the new igmt license: http://www.opensource.org/osd.html | 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor. | | The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the | program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not | restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being | used for genetic research. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html | * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). It would be sad if igmt is not free software anymore, because we (people interested in free gis software) will have to work with the latest version which came with a free software license and could not profit of your good scientific work. Best, Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (www.fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010121/e99ac9a5/attachment.bin From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Mon Jan 22 18:23:35 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 22 Jan 2001 09:23:35 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] SPRING GIS software In-Reply-To: <1291.200.227.172.98.979969725.squirrel@www.dpi.inpe.br> Message-ID: <20010122172350.0B0A82211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Dear Mr Camara, Like Bernhard Reiter, I thank you for taking the time to explain your position to this list. I have always had the sentiment that the SPRING project was close in philosophy to the FreeGIS project and it is nice to hear your views. This response also follows Mr. Reiter's in suggesting that you could, in the framework of your current institutional structure, open up the source code of SPRING without as much difficulty as you present. Hopefully these comments can help you re-frame the issues you face. I signed up for the right to download SPRING about two and a half years ago but I decided that I could not use the product. I am a scientist collaborating with researchers in Africa and must guarantee that the work I do can easily be packaged onto a CD-ROM and redistributed to groups who have computers but no internet connectivity. For this purpose, the right to redistribute is paramount. A separate part of my work has been exploring the data structures required in a GIS to hold 4-dimensional raster, vector and other (say mathematical field descriptions--not raster fields but 4-d continuous functions) in such a way as to be rapidly searchable and analyzable. For this work, the ability to see other implementations could be a huge source of knowledge. It strikes me that neither of my interest in your code conflict with your work and that both could be quite useful as a source of credit to the INPE. Both are satisfied simply by releasing a snapshot code under an open source license. So what obstacles remain? The obstacles you present are the following: 1) Legal issues 2) Product responsibilty 3) Committment to the product rather than the development process 4) Code documentation 5) The TERRALIB open-source effort as a substitute Like Mr. Reiter, your second point seems superfluous since any responsibility you have, you also bear under the current distribution system. The legal issues do not seem to be insurmountable and if you can persuade your lawyer to HELP you do what you intend, you undoubtedly can figure out a way to acheive this. Your third point arises, I believe from a misunderstanding of the open source development process. By opening up the code, INPE bears no responsibility to become the maintainer of an open source project. The FreeGIS community is able to use portions of your work (with credit still going to INPE for those portions) or the FreeGIS community can fork the SPRING effort to continue from that point on. There is no requirement that INPE set up a public CVS archive and allow the community into your development process. Indeed the cost may very well be prohibitive in time and energy to allow this. Especially if INPE has decided to move into a new, modern project of this kind, it seems much better to focus on your new effort. In this context the fourth issue is unfortunate but not a show stopper. It would certainly be useful for one of the developers to spend an afternoon to write a simple white paper explaining the structure of the code base but this is not a requirement. However, if INPE is moving into an open source effort, it would be helpful for us to see the previous effort and give you feedback about the documentation which is really necessary to make code readable from the outside. I am currently trying the read the code for the GNOME spreadsheet Gnumeric, a classic open-source development effort, and it is quite difficult with little documentation beyond a few white papers. Finally the TERRALIB effort. I am really excited to hear you are working on such a library. As I stated earlier, the presence of the code of your earlier work could only help the community at large by allowing a comparison and enabling discussion of the successful part of INPE's previous work. I encourage you to pick a stable snapshot of SPRING for release, to explain to the lawyers that they must help you pick a well understood open-source license to use for your release and to post the snapshot on the web with an explanation that you do not have the resources to move the project to an open source development effort but do want to offer your work to the public. At least then I could install openSPRING and see your great work! :-) Thanks again for your time in explaining your position. I look forward to the discussions over TERRALIB. kind regards, adrian custer acuster at nature.berkeley.educational (truncate) Dept of Entomology U.C.Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-3112 USA > > A recent thread on FreeGIS-list > which discusses the availability of > the SPRING source code has been brought > to our attention, and I would like to > clarify some issues. > > First, we are extremely supportive > of the FreeGIS effort and free software > in general. That said, > why don?t we simply put SPRING on the > web as source code? > > As a starting point, there are legal > problems which we haven?t been able > to sort out. But these are not the only ones. > > Putting software on the web, on whatever > form, implies an enormous responsibility > on the part of the producer. It does not > matter if no formal warranty is given, > the individual or the institution need > to act in a responsible fashion. If people > use your software for anything, you?d better > provide quality, or else your reputation > will be compromised. > > SPRING is a very large software product, with > hundreds of functions, and 500.000+ lines of > C++ code, produced over a period of a decade, > by a large team (more than 100 man-years, at my > last count). The project did not > begin as a free software effort, but rather as > an integrated GIS+IP freeware product for the > Brazilian and Latin American users. > > More than 10,000 people worldwide have downloaded > SPRING, and we have a strong commitment to SPRING > as a full GIS product, capable > of supporting real-life projects, and we > have a significant number of real-world users. > > Making SPRING available as open source on the web > would require a major effort by our team in terms > of documentation, and further effort in terms of supporting > fellow code developers. These commitments are > outside of our current capacity. > > We have given priority to supporting users > of SPRING, producing enhanced versions, correcting bugs, > generating user documentation, preparing training courses > and maintaining the same code running on Windows, Linux > and Solaris. These activities keep a lot of us busy all > the time. > > Therefore, SPRING-product has, for us, > a much higher priority that SPRING-open source. > I hope you appreciate the difference. > > Taking everything into account, we have taken the > option of using our experience with SPRING to design > a product that?s meant to be open source. That > product is called TERRALIB, whose first version will > be made available on-line sometime in 2001. > Our aims in TERRALIB is to build a library for GIS > software development, and our next-generation GIS > products will be built using it. > > All of you that develop and maintain > open source code know how much effort is involved. > Therefore, I hope you will appreciate your cautious > approach, which is aimed at only making commitments > that we can maintain. > > Regards, > Gilberto Camara > Co-ordinator for R&D in GIS > National Institute for Space Research (INPE) From bernhard at intevation.de Mon Jan 22 19:50:33 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 19:50:33 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] [jan@intevation.de: [Mapit] New release 0.9] Message-ID: <20010122195033.N16907@abnoba.intevation.de> A new version of mapit was announced (see attachment). Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Jan-Oliver Wagner Subject: [Mapit] New release 0.9 Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 11:23:13 +0100 Size: 2941 Url: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010122/f82e0f7c/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010122/f82e0f7c/attachment.bin From silke at intevation.de Tue Jan 23 18:40:18 2001 From: silke at intevation.de (Silke Reimer) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 18:40:18 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Update of FreeGIS CD - GMT-Scripts Message-ID: <20010123184018.C354@abnoba.intevation.de> Hello! After building a new RPM for GMT last week I can now add the GMT_script-RPM. It's again available on our FTP-Site ftp://www.freegis.org/freegis/gnu-linux-*/updates/GMT_scripts-3.3.6-1.noarch.rpm Bye bye Silke ---- Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de From jgreid at uow.edu.au Wed Jan 24 06:53:58 2001 From: jgreid at uow.edu.au (John Reid) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 16:53:58 +1100 Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted Message-ID: <3A6E6DF6.19F51444@uow.edu.au> Hi all, Does anyone know of an open-source (or even just freely available) viewer for SEG-Y format seismic data? Or even better, is there support for the SEG-Y format in one of the open source GIS packages? We have some sonar data from the EdgeTech X-Star sub-bottom profiling system, and the ability to integrate this data with other sources would be very useful :-) cheers, John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- john reid e-mail john_reid at uow.edu.au technical officer room G02, building 41 school of geosciences phone +61 02 4221 3963 university of wollongong fax +61 02 4221 4250 uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be seen. more questions! -mentat zensufi apply standard disclaimers as desired... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From frigole at yahoo.com Wed Jan 24 15:49:24 2001 From: frigole at yahoo.com (Iris Frigolé) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 06:49:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Freegis-list] Geographic Data File (GDF) Message-ID: <20010124144924.94826.qmail@web10706.mail.yahoo.com> Dear List members I would like to know more abou the so called geographic data file (GDF), developed for the European Digital Road Map and which was supposed to become a CEN and ISO standard...at least this is what the documentation that I have found says but it all dates from back in 1997. Can anyone tell me what happened with it? Is there any european standard for the exchange of digital spatial data? My apologies if my question is not 100% freegis. Thank you in advance for your interest, Iris Frigolé frigole at tahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 25 10:06:23 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:06:23 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted In-Reply-To: <3A6E6DF6.19F51444@uow.edu.au>; from jgreid@uow.edu.au on Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 04:53:58PM +1100 References: <3A6E6DF6.19F51444@uow.edu.au> Message-ID: <20010125100623.A10431@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi John, On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 04:53:58PM +1100, John Reid wrote: > Does anyone know of an open-source (or even just freely available) > viewer for SEG-Y format seismic data? Or even better, is there support > for the SEG-Y format in one of the open source GIS packages? We have > some sonar data from the EdgeTech X-Star sub-bottom profiling system, > and the ability to integrate this data with other sources would be very > useful :-) In a quick surevey I found SU (Seismic Unix, http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes/index.html) which seems to be able to load SEG-Y format and is written in C. So that would be a good code base for integration into GRASS or other GIS. Unfortunately SU is *no* free software though it seems that the authors have the intention to have it Free Software (and they even call it free software). Is anyone else aware on a SEG-Y format reading module as Free Software? Perhaps it is possible to get the code from the SU authors if we ask and explain our intention. Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From reinaldotorres at cantv.net Thu Jan 25 15:54:21 2001 From: reinaldotorres at cantv.net (Adams Consulting, S.A.-R. Torres) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:54:21 -0400 Subject: [Freegis-list] unsuscribe Message-ID: <005901c086de$b43afbc0$8900a8c0@adamsconsulting.net> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010125/614aaf83/attachment.html From john at dix.Mines.EDU Thu Jan 25 18:29:36 2001 From: john at dix.Mines.EDU (John Stockwell) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:29:36 -0700 (MST) Subject: [jan@intevation.de: Re: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted] In-Reply-To: <20010125102045.B10431@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 04:53:58PM +1100, John Reid wrote: >>> Does anyone know of an open-source (or even just freely available) >>> viewer for SEG-Y format seismic data? Or even better, is there support >>> for the SEG-Y format in one of the open source GIS packages? We have >>> some sonar data from the EdgeTech X-Star sub-bottom profiling system, >>> and the ability to integrate this data with other sources would be very >>> useful :-) >> Jan: >>I am am forwarding you my answer to a recent question >on the FreeGIS list. > >The actual problem of your license that violates the definition >of Free Software is >> >> "... The simple repackaging and selling of the SU package as is, is expressly >> forbidden without the prior written permission of the Colorado School >> of Mines. Any such arrangement will carry the restriction that only >> a modest profit above reproduction charges may be realized by the >> reproducer." > >With adding this statement, did you have a specific intention in mind? First. To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal definition of what constitutes "Free Software". You may be referring to the "copyleft" policy of the GNU project, but the rest of the world is not them. Indeed, we may be violating *your* definition of Free Software, but we stand by our right to call our materials "Free". Second. As to why we have this statement, this reason is simple: the disparity in price between our Free software and the price of commercial packages. Commercial seismic packages cost 10's of thousands to 100's of thousands of dollars, so there is a strong temptation by third party individuals to simply repackage SU, doing no original work of their own, for the purpose of selling the package at a price beyon mere reproduction costs. Indeed, we had one incident a couple of years ago in which a couple of individuals attempted to sell SU, as is, to the University of Bengal for $100,000. They were not successful because one of the students had the presence of mind to check the net and contact me. The individual thanked my for both providing SU as Free Software, and for having an explicit statement in the License making it illegal to repackage and sell the code, as is. Third. The purpose of SU is to elevate the basic level of seismic utilities that are available to the world community. Indeed, we *encourage* users to take parts of the SU source code and use it for the development of their own applications, whether these be commercial, or non-commercial. Our project is not one which exists to make money for organizations that exist merely to sell CD's containing other people's software, but who do not do original work of their own. Fourth. The package is updated continuously, so by the time a CD would be obtained by a user, that version would be out of date. So, the distribution by CD option is less attractive. Fifth. We actively encourage users to submit their own improvements to the package. Users do this without compensation, safe in the knowledge that their work is not being exploited by a third party "distributors" to make money that the authors of the code will never see. > Jan: >As you can see from the attached mail, it would be helpful to utilize >the code for SEG-Y reading for other Free GIS Software products. >So it would be great if you would release at least that part of code >under a standard Free Software license or just contribute it e.g. to GRASS. The full statement of the Guidlines of our license is as follows: Guidlines: SU may be used in the commercial processing of data, as well as the development of commercial software applications. The simple repackaging and selling of the SU package as is, is expressly forbidden without the prior written permission of the Colorado School of Mines. Any such arrangement will carry the restriction that only a modest profit above reproduction charges may be realized by the reproducer. I do not believe that this restricts the normal usage of SU for academic, government, or commercial seismic processing or for the development of commercial applications. Indeed, numerous seismic processing companies and software vendors make use of our code for both of these purposes. As this usage is in accordance with our license, they do not have to obtain prior written permission to use it in this fashion. >Jan: >SU make a very good impression though I haven't doenloaded and tested it. >If you decide to make it Free Software, I would be happy to add it to FreeGIS at >http://www.freegis.org. I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with SU, before you make further comments. Furthermore, I strongly object to your characterization of SU as not being "Free Software". The Seismic Un*x package *is* Free Software. I would also point out that our package is the *only* Free seismic software package of its kind currently used in more than 55 countries. If "FreeGIS" is requesting a link to our site, then you have my permission to do that. If you would like to request permission to include our software in one of your CD distributions, then you need only write a letter to me requesting permission to do this. Please note, permission to distribute SU by CD is for a given release of SU, which expires when a new release is granted. I don't want a bunch of old releases being recycled, when new and improved versions are available. I would furthemore point out that your policy regarding your definition of "Free Software" is deficient, in that it does not recognize the right of authors of Free Software to put their own restrictions and conditions on their packages, nor does it encourage users of Free Software to familiarize themselves with the licenses that free software may be downloading from the net. -- John Stockwell | john at dix.Mines.EDU Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x) Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes voice: (303) 273-3049 Our new book: Norman Bleistein, Jack K. Cohen, John W. Stockwell Jr., [2000], Mathematics of multidimensional seismic imaging, migration, and inversion, (Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, V. 13.), Springer-Verlag, New York. This file is the property of the Colorado School of Mines, it may not be altered in any way. Copyright statement: Copyright (c) Colorado School of Mines, 1992-2000 All rights reserved. The CWP/SU Seismic Unix package is not public domain software, but it is available free under the following license: License: Permission to use, copy, and modify this software for any purpose within the guidelines set below, and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies, and the name of the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this software without specific, written prior permission from CSM. CSM makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. Guidlines: SU may be used in the commercial processing of data, as well as the development of commercial software applications. The simple repackaging and selling of the SU package as is, is expressly forbidden without the prior written permission of the Colorado School of Mines. Any such arrangement will carry the restriction that only a modest profit above reproduction charges may be realized by the reproducer. Referencing Seismic Unix: In publications, please reference SU as per the following example. Example: Cohen, J. K. and Stockwell, Jr. J. W., (2000), CWP/SU: Seismic Unix Release 34: a free package for seismic research and processing, Center for Wave Phenomena, Colorado School of Mines. Of course, 2000 and 34 should be replaced with date and number of the release you are using. Recent articles about SU in peer-reviewed journals: Saeki, T., (1999), A guide to Seismic Unix (SU)(2)---examples of data processing (part 1), data input and preparation of headers, Butsuri-Tansa (Geophysical Exploration), vol. 52, no. 5, 465-477. Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1999), The CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x Package, Computers and Geosciences, May 1999. Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1997), Free Software in Education: A case study of CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x, The Leading Edge, July 1997. Templeton, M. E., Gough, C.A., (1998), Web Seismic Un*x: Making seismic reflection processing more accessible, Computers and Geosciences, in press. Disclaimer: There are no guarantees, explicit or implicit, made by the Center for Wave Phenomena, the Colorado School of Mines, or any member of the aforesaid organizations, or by any contributor to this package, past, present, or future, regarding the accuracy, safety, usefulness, or any other quality or aspect of this software or any software derived from it. Statement of Y2K compliance: All releases of SU from the initial to the current release have been Y2K compliant as there are no serious parts of the SU package that depend on the date. From jan at intevation.de Thu Jan 25 19:24:58 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:24:58 +0100 Subject: [jan@intevation.de: Re: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted] In-Reply-To: ; from john@dix.Mines.EDU on Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 10:29:36AM -0700 References: <20010125102045.B10431@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: <20010125192458.A14570@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi John, thank you for your quick answer. Yes, I am very strict on some terms :-) I will try to answer all of your points as precise as possible. Independent of the license discussion I really appreciate your efford and the powerful software you are making available to many people. On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 10:29:36AM -0700, John Stockwell wrote: > First. To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal definition of what > constitutes "Free Software". You may be referring to the "copyleft" policy > of the GNU project, but the rest of the world is not them. Indeed, we may > be violating *your* definition of Free Software, but we stand by our right > to call our materials "Free". you are correct that "Free Software" is not a trademark. Anyone can define the with his own ideas. However, I was referring to the world-wide most accepted definition which is supported by the FSF and OSI. "copyleft" is one license among many being compliant to the definition of "Free Software". > Second. As to why we have this statement, this reason is simple: the disparity > in price between our Free software and the price of commercial packages. btw: in my definition free software *is* commercial. I distinguish free and proprietary software :-) > Commercial seismic packages cost 10's of thousands to 100's of thousands of dollars, > so there is a strong temptation by third party individuals to simply > repackage SU, doing no original work of their own, for the purpose of selling the > package at a price beyon mere reproduction costs. I perfectly understand this! That's why I prefer GPL or LGPL over MIT or BSD style licences. > Indeed, we had one incident a couple of years ago in which a couple of individuals > attempted to sell SU, as is, to the University of Bengal for $100,000. They were not > successful because one of the students had the presence of mind to check the net > and contact me. The individual thanked my for both providing SU as Free Software, > and for having an explicit statement in the License making it illegal to repackage > and sell the code, as is. It is correct that your statement prevented an abuse of your software. GPL would have done the same job (OK, if it is brought to the attantion of the university of Bengal that the product offered for $100.000 is freely available as well and they still pay - who cares? :-) > Third. The purpose of SU is to elevate the basic level of seismic utilities that > are available to the world community. Indeed, we *encourage* users to take parts > of the SU source code and use it for the development of their own applications, > whether these be commercial, or non-commercial. Our project is not one which > exists to make money for organizations that exist merely to sell CD's containing > other people's software, but who do not do original work of their own. if you mean commercial=proprietary then GPL would not be a good idea for you. Perhaps the LGPL would make it, but I think you would like to offer even just portions of code to be incorporated in proprietary products, right? That is not possible with the LGPL. So you have choosen a license that is adequate for your needs. > Fourth. The package is updated continuously, so by the time a CD would be obtained > by a user, that version would be out of date. So, the distribution by CD option > is less attractive. hm, that actually makes your license statement obsolete. > Fifth. We actively encourage users to submit their own improvements to the package. > Users do this without compensation, safe in the knowledge that their work is not being > exploited by a third party "distributors" to make money that the authors of the > code will never see. but it is exploited, because a contributors algorithm goes into a proprietary product and is improved there. The original author will never hear about bug fixes of his code from the proprietary people which is quite unsatisfactory to my mind and one of the reasons why the GPL and LGPL have been developed. > I would furthemore point out that your policy regarding your definition of > "Free Software" is deficient, in that it does not recognize the right of authors > of Free Software to put their own restrictions and conditions on their packages, really, I did not get this one. Any author can put any license terms on his software and absolutely independent of what the license text says, call the stuff Free Software. Even Bill Gates can call W2000 Free Software. We live in a free world. (its because Free Software is not a registered trademark) > nor does it encourage users of Free Software to familiarize themselves with the > licenses that free software may be downloading from the net. a good point. Many software homepages have hidden the license text quite good. with some others you have the mandatory click "I agree" before downloading/running. INMHO, the license should be reachable via a visible link (homepage) or menu item (software) so that anyone can easily find the license when looking for it. I recommend to not introduce mandatory stuff (no one will read it in that moment anyway). At least in Germany the laws says that you must familiarise yourself with the terms of usage when you get a product (You are not possible to say 'I didn't know' when you have violated an easily accessible license aagreement). wow, this was all a long discussion of Free Software again on this list :-) Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu Thu Jan 25 19:55:58 2001 From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer) Date: 25 Jan 2001 10:55:58 -0800 Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010125185607.DB90C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Dear Mr. Stockwell, First of all an appology. Jan-Oliver Wagner often comes across much more aggressively than he intends. Having followed him on a list for a while, I do not think he means to be as harsh as he occasionally sounds. Please do not take it, or this, as criticism of your work or motivation. I am always pleased to see people share their work with others and your coding sounds like (I have not even been to the site) it is well built. Congratulations. You are of course right when you state: > To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal definition of what > constitutes "Free Software". While there is no legal definition, there has been a large debate in the field and the term "Free" has come to have a fairly well defined meaning. (NB in this context the word is usually, though not always, capitalized.) The term "Free", as opposed to other terms like "open source", is intented to preserve at least the following freedoms: -access to the source for personal modification -ability to re-distribute the product *to anyone" possibly with the restrictuion that none of these rights can be taken away from anyone. -ability to re-distribute the modified work. The generally accepted standard for the meaning of "Free software" is the policy of the Debian group. This you undoubtedly know. I wonder though if you are also aware of all the thinking that has gone into the issue you are grappling with-how to prevent the co-option of one's work by others. There are MANY people who feel the same way as you about their code, they don't want it used in certain ways by certain groups. (The orginal releases of the GNU/Linux operating system were licensed so that it could not be used by the military.) Most projects have found that the preservation of the above freedoms are enough. When the two individuals you mention tried to sell your software, they were breaking your license. The GPL solves this by allowing them to sell the software but preventing them from allowing the buyer to turn around and give it away. The net result ends up being the same, there is no inherent value in the product, only in its distribution and support. Essentially your license is taking away one of the freedoms that is usually granted by "Free" licenses-the right to re-distribute for some compensation- in order to prevent exhorbitant prices being charged for software you would like to be cheaply available. Experience has shown us that Free licenses also prevent this from happening. So again, my appologies if this community seemed a little brisk and thank you for your work for the community at large. I obviously cannot speak for more than myself, but I think you will find that most people would agree with Mr. Wagner that this *tiny* restriction prevents them from calling your license "Free". The emergence of the large body of work we now consider "Free" has taken a long time and many of us are quite defensive about both the term and the ideal. I believe you share the ideal. Perhaps you would consider exploring the question a little further and deciding whether you still believe that you would call your license "Free" (in which case we can amicably disagree) or whether you could acheive the same goals with another license that you would consider "Free". thank you for your time, sincerely, adrian custer Dept of Entomology U.C. Berkeley The Debian policy is at: http://www.debian.org/intro/free The Gnu project has its own take at: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca Thu Jan 25 20:08:39 2001 From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 11:08:39 -0800 Subject: [jan@intevation.de: Re: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y view er wanted] Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D07530848AE53@raptor.gov.yk.ca> > >The actual problem of your license that violates the definition > >of Free Software is ... > First. To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal > definition of what constitutes "Free Software". You may > be referring to the "copyleft" policy of the GNU project, > but the rest of the world is not them. Indeed, we may > be violating *your* definition of Free Software, but we > stand by our right to call our materials "Free". This debate has been hashed over many times without satisfactory resolution, and will continue to be for the forseeable future. The term Free Software, as used by FreeGIS.org refers to software which follows the Open Source Definition http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. The problem is that the words used, Free and Software, are very generic. Short of the Free Software Foundation establishing Free Software as a trademark, which will never happen, Free Software will not become a phrase permanently bonded with the meaning "Software which follows the Open Source Definition". I'm not the first to suggest this, but what we really need is a word which doesn't come with the popularity and host of assiciated meanings, connotations, and uses that "free" does. As if that is not restriction enough, the needed word also has to be well known enough to be mostly recognizable and understood without resorting to reading the OSD. "This program is Gribbledy Software" just won't work. The only word I've seen so far that comes close to matching, though still not a perfect match, the meaning of free as the 'Free Software' community intends is "libre". So in the end, I have to stand by the Colorado School of Mines right to call their not-OSDI-compliant program 'free software' even though my personal stance is different. I do ask, but not expect, that they courteously refrain from capitalizing the phrase so as to avoid at least some of the name space collision. my 2c, -matt ======================================== Matt Wilkie * GIS Technician * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/ From john at dix.Mines.EDU Thu Jan 25 22:15:04 2001 From: john at dix.Mines.EDU (John Stockwell) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 14:15:04 -0700 (MST) Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted In-Reply-To: <20010125185607.DB90C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: Dear Adrian, Below my signature is the listing of the Seismic Unix LEGAL_STATEMENT so that people can read it in its entirety. I would point out to anyone who is interested, that you may download the Seismic Unix package from: http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes Inspite of Mr. Wagner's careless comments, this code is free software: as per the conditions of the LEGAL_STATMENT which follows my signature. >> To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal definition of what >> constitutes "Free Software". > >While there is no legal definition, there has been a large debate in the >field and the term "Free" has come to have a fairly well defined >meaning. (NB in this context the word is usually, though not always, >capitalized.) The term "Free", as opposed to other terms like "open >source", is intented to preserve at least the following freedoms: > >-access to the source for personal modification >-ability to re-distribute the product *to anyone" possibly with the >restrictuion that none of these rights can be taken away from anyone. >-ability to re-distribute the modified work. Yes. Our license guarantees those rights. Indeed, the only rights that are denied are those of companies that are in the free software repackaging business, but who are too lazy to write a letter asking for permission to repackage and distribute the codes as is! >This you undoubtedly know. I wonder though if you are also aware of all >the thinking that has gone into the issue you are grappling with- Who's grappling? I am responding to a rather careless and inaccurate statement by Mr. Wagner. >Essentially your license is taking away one >of the freedoms that is usually granted by "Free" licenses-the right to >re-distribute for some compensation- in order to prevent exhorbitant >prices being charged for software you would like to be cheaply >available. Experience has shown us that Free licenses also prevent this >from happening. We have been putting SU out on the Net since 1992, which is prehistory, as far as free software distribution is concerned. Our code is already used in 55 countries. As near as I can tell, our license *protects* users from unscrupulous redistributors, and helps us ensure that users are getting the most current version of the package. >Perhaps you would consider exploring the question a little >further and deciding whether you still believe that you would call your >license "Free" (in which case we can amicably disagree) or whether you >could acheive the same goals with another license that you would >consider "Free". Our software _is_ Free Software. It may not agree with the definition of "Free Software" that Mr. Wagner espouses, it is Free Software, nonetheless. I see no particular advantage in changing a License which has worked well for the past 8 years. >adrian custer -- John Stockwell | john at dix.Mines.EDU Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x) Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes voice: (303) 273-3049 Our new book: Norman Bleistein, Jack K. Cohen, John W. Stockwell Jr., [2000], Mathematics of multidimensional seismic imaging, migration, and inversion, (Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, V. 13.), Springer-Verlag, New York. ----------- LEGAL STATEMENT ------------------------------------------- This file is the property of the Colorado School of Mines, it may not be altered in any way. Copyright statement: Copyright (c) Colorado School of Mines, 1992-2000 All rights reserved. The CWP/SU Seismic Unix package is not public domain software, but it is available free under the following license: License: Permission to use, copy, and modify this software for any purpose within the guidelines set below, and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies, and the name of the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this software without specific, written prior permission from CSM. CSM makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. Guidlines: SU may be used in the commercial processing of data, as well as the development of commercial software applications. The simple repackaging and selling of the SU package as is, is expressly forbidden without the prior written permission of the Colorado School of Mines. Any such arrangement will carry the restriction that only a modest profit above reproduction charges may be realized by the reproducer. Referencing Seismic Unix: In publications, please reference SU as per the following example. Example: Cohen, J. K. and Stockwell, Jr. J. W., (2000), CWP/SU: Seismic Unix Release 34: a free package for seismic research and processing, Center for Wave Phenomena, Colorado School of Mines. Of course, 2000 and 34 should be replaced with date and number of the release you are using. Recent articles about SU in peer-reviewed journals: Saeki, T., (1999), A guide to Seismic Unix (SU)(2)---examples of data processing (part 1), data input and preparation of headers, Butsuri-Tansa (Geophysical Exploration), vol. 52, no. 5, 465-477. Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1999), The CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x Package, Computers and Geosciences, May 1999. Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1997), Free Software in Education: A case study of CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x, The Leading Edge, July 1997. Templeton, M. E., Gough, C.A., (1998), Web Seismic Un*x: Making seismic reflection processing more accessible, Computers and Geosciences, in press. Disclaimer: There are no guarantees, explicit or implicit, made by the Center for Wave Phenomena, the Colorado School of Mines, or any member of the aforesaid organizations, or by any contributor to this package, past, present, or future, regarding the accuracy, safety, usefulness, or any other quality or aspect of this software or any software derived from it. Statement of Y2K compliance: All releases of SU from the initial to the current release have been Y2K compliant as there are no serious parts of the SU package that depend on the date. Acknowledgements: SU stands for Seismic Unix, a processing line developed at the Colorado School of Mines, partially based on Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) software. Einar Kjartansson, in cooperation with Shuki Ronen, wrote the first draft what is now called SU, while both were graduate students at Stanford University. In turn, some of the fundamental concepts they implemented were formulated by their mentor, Jon Claerbout, Director of the Stanford Exploration Project. Ronen brought this work to our Center during a two year stay here and, during this time, aided by Jack K. Cohen, began to turn SU into a supportable and exportable product. Chris Liner, while a student at the Center, wrote most of the graphics codes used in the pre-workstation (i.e, graphics terminal) age of SU. Liner's broad knowledge of seismology and seismic processing enabled him to make a positive and continuing influence on the SU coding philosophy. Dave Hale wrote several of the ``heavy duty'' processing codes as well as most of the core scientific and graphics libraries. His knowledge of good C-language coding practice helped make our package a good example for applied computer scientists. John Stockwell is largely responsible for designing the Makefile structure that makes the package easy to install on the majority of Unix platforms. Thanks go to all the CWP students present and past and to many in the worldwide SU community who have contributed to the package. In memorium: Jack K. Cohen passed away in October 1996. He will surely be missed by all who had contact with him in the mathematical, geophysical, and SU-user communities. John Stockwell | john at dix.Mines.EDU Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x) Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes voice: (303) 273-3049 | fax: (303) 273-3478. From Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de Tue Jan 23 00:36:25 2001 From: Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de (Andreas Lange) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 00:36:25 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] copyright on dcw data from www.gisdatadepot.com Message-ID: <3A6CC3F9.5D544F36@Rhein-Main.de> Hi, could someone explain to me the copyright/license of the Digital Chart of the World data from www.gisdatadepot.com? Is this the same dataset that is distributed by ESRI? >From http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/faq/ques1.html i conclude that the DCW is copyright ESRI and not "free" in the real meaning of the word. Thanks a lot, Andreas -- Andreas Lange, 65187 Wiesbaden, Germany, Tel. +49 611 807850 Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de - A.C.Lange at GMX.net From Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de Thu Jan 25 01:42:26 2001 From: Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de (Andreas Lange) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 01:42:26 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Geographic Data File (GDF) References: <20010124144924.94826.qmail@web10706.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3A6F7672.6F4A5AC3@Rhein-Main.de> Hi Iris, a similar question was asked on the german grass gis list recently. I only have some URLs at hand (in german): http://www.ertico.com/links/gdf/gdf.htm http://www.ertico.com/links/gdfpub/gdfpub.htm http://www.tugraz.at/forschung/diplomarbeiten/1998/660/D-0011.html http://www.tugraz.at/forschung/diplomarbeiten/1998/660/D-0006.html Perhaps those URLs give you a starting point for a search on the web. Andreas Iris Frigoli wrote: > > Dear List members > > I would like to know more abou the so called > geographic data file (GDF), developed for the European > Digital Road Map and which was supposed to become a > CEN and ISO standard...at least this is what the > documentation that I have found says but it all dates > from back in 1997. > > Can anyone tell me what happened with it? Is there any > european standard for the exchange of digital spatial > data? > > My apologies if my question is not 100% freegis. > > Thank you in advance for your interest, > > Iris Frigoli > frigole at tahoo.com -- Andreas Lange, 65187 Wiesbaden, Germany, Tel. +49 611 807850 Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de - A.C.Lange at GMX.net From bernhard at intevation.de Fri Jan 26 17:23:52 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:23:52 +0100 Subject: [jan@intevation.de: Re: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y view er wanted] In-Reply-To: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D07530848AE53@raptor.gov.yk.ca>; from Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca on Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 11:08:39AM -0800 References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D07530848AE53@raptor.gov.yk.ca> Message-ID: <20010126172352.A20878@abnoba.intevation.de> On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 11:08:39AM -0800, Matt.Wilkie wrote: > > First. To my knowledge there is no all inclusive legal > > definition of what constitutes "Free Software". > This debate has been hashed over many times without satisfactory > resolution, and will continue to be for the forseeable future. > The term Free Software, as used by FreeGIS.org refers to software > which follows the Open Source Definition http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. I agree. The discussion about how to call these software is going on for a long time. But the results also aim at that it will not be as broad as it has been. > The problem is that the words used, Free and Software, are very > generic. This is true, but the search for new words has not lead to better alternatives. As the concept of freedom and software needs to be explained to most people anyway, there is a chance to establish a common ground for the meaning of "Free Software". AFAIK the Free Software Foundation was the first to actually coin the term around 1985. > I'm not the first to suggest this, but what we really need is > a word which doesn't come with the popularity and host of > assiciated meanings, connotations, and uses that "free" does. From my experience, "Free Software" is creating less misunderstandings and its assositations are near to the actual meaning. We are talking about freedom of speech, freedom to teach and free competition. All positive connotations which are friendly towards the whole society. It would be nice to come to an agreement on which degrees of freedom have to be attached to a software to be called free or "Free Software". Bernhard -- Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net) The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org) Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org) FSF Europe (fsfeurope.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010126/9b976611/attachment.bin From jan at intevation.de Fri Jan 26 17:25:19 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:25:19 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] copyright on dcw data from www.gisdatadepot.com In-Reply-To: <3A6CC3F9.5D544F36@Rhein-Main.de>; from Andreas.Lange@Rhein-Main.de on Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:36:25AM +0100 References: <3A6CC3F9.5D544F36@Rhein-Main.de> Message-ID: <20010126172519.A20778@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi Andreas, On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:36:25AM +0100, Andreas Lange wrote: > could someone explain to me the copyright/license of the Digital Chart > of the World data from www.gisdatadepot.com? > Is this the same dataset that is distributed by ESRI? > >From http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/faq/ques1.html i conclude that the > DCW is copyright ESRI and not "free" in the real meaning of the word. the US provide digital vector data as public domain (VMAP). These data exist on different resolutions (VMAP Level 0 and Level 1 are both public domain because they are de-classified). I don't know whether there is a Level 2. Level 0 is about 1:1.000.000 and Level 1 about 1:100.000. Several revisions of the VMAPs were published, DCW is based on VMAP Level 0 Revision 2. The current version is 3 and thus DCW is outdated. Especially for Germany there are many outdated information in DCW (like Karl-Marx-Stadt instead of Chemnitz). The differences between DCW and VMAPL0R2 are: * VMAP uses the VPF format, DCW uses ESRI e00 format. * VMAP is public domain and hence has no copyright while DCW is copyrighted by ESRI. DCW is _most probably_ free data. However, ESRI was able to restrict State U. of Pennsylvania's distribution of the data in some way. So better to use VMAPL0R3 for it is also more up-to-date. Finally, VMAPL1 has been declassified, but it is not possible to get them all downloaded from NIMA. Some problems seem to be involved. On the one hand NIMA seems to refuse (or at least delay) the realease of the data. Furthermore, several national agencies have contributed to the VMAP data, but with restricted rights. So actually the VMAP data never could have been released as public domain. For VMAPL0 there seem to be a (non-written) agreement of all agencies to allow the public domain status (though you find e.g. the UK crown copyright still in the documentation). I have the feeling that it is far more complicated with L1 and perhaps that is the reason why NIMA has only some of the L1 data on their ftp site. There is a lot more to say about these data and there were several long discussions about this. Please refer to the archives of comp.infosystems.gis where last was a long thread on this topic. Cheers Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From bernhard at intevation.de Fri Jan 26 18:00:02 2001 From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 18:00:02 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted In-Reply-To: ; from john@dix.Mines.EDU on Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 02:15:04PM -0700 References: <20010125185607.DB90C2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu> Message-ID: <20010126180002.B20878@abnoba.intevation.de> Dear John, certainly your SU software shares the spirit of Free Software. And I am glad that you opened up your software widely by this extend and invite everybody to share the code. As Mr. Custer tried to explain to you there is quite a big community sharing the same critera for software being free. Your software simply does not match the criteria due to the fact that you pose restrictions on the repackaging of SU. Of course you have your reasons for doing so and I am not critising your actions. On the other hand you cannot deny, that your use of the word "free software" is different. Mr. Custer also mentioned a long debate about the criteria on what to call free software. I cannot force you to change your opinion on what constitutes free software, but I can try to give you some arguments on why I believe that it might help the SU project and its community if the source would come without repackaging restrictions. The reason for allowing redistribution for money in Free Software criteria is that most repackagers or distributors do a good job. If the license of the Free Software has a strong protection of freedom (like the GPL), the vendor cannot disclose the freedom of the software from the customer. So the customer is informed about his rights on the software. Except for extrem cases were the customer is doing absolutly no checking of the software and alternatives, he is basically paying the value added by the distributor. Otherwise there is no reason to buy it from this one distributor. This fosters a competition between distributors to add value to Free Software which is good. A lot of them try to add printed documentation, select stable versions or build them for easier installation. And other distributors and the authors usually benefit from this. A second reason for a redistribution for all purposes without a permission is the guarrantied continuation of the free software development process. If I am on the other part of the world with no internet access and the author of the software is for what reason ever not reachable, this is not blocking me from fixing bugs and redistributing this for money. It happened quite a few times that copyright holders were not reachable and the software redistribution blocked. These are two advantages that the SU community might want. Right now this restriction prevent SU from coming with Debian GNU/Linux distribution or RedHat distributions. Both groups have a high profile in adding towards the products they are distributing. SU might get even more known. (Disclosure: My company also does repackaging of Free Software, like the FreeGIS CD (which we sell for 25Euro). Right now we cannot distribute SU on it, because we want other distributors to be able to use our additions without asking.) Regards, Bernhard On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 02:15:04PM -0700, John Stockwell wrote: > Below my signature is the listing of the Seismic Unix LEGAL_STATEMENT so > that people can read it in its entirety. > > I would point out to anyone who is interested, that you may download > the Seismic Unix package from: http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes > Inspite of Mr. Wagner's careless comments, this code is free software: > as per the conditions of the LEGAL_STATMENT which follows my signature. > >While there is no legal definition, there has been a large debate in the > >field and the term "Free" has come to have a fairly well defined > >meaning. (NB in this context the word is usually, though not always, > >capitalized.) The term "Free", as opposed to other terms like "open > >source", is intented to preserve at least the following freedoms: > > > >-access to the source for personal modification > >-ability to re-distribute the product *to anyone" possibly with the > >restrictuion that none of these rights can be taken away from anyone. > >-ability to re-distribute the modified work. > > Yes. Our license guarantees those rights. Indeed, the only rights that > are denied are those of companies that are in the free software repackaging > business, but who are too lazy to write a letter asking for permission > to repackage and distribute the codes as is! -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/attachments/20010126/ec3d8cad/attachment.bin From rbezares at worldonline.es Sat Jan 27 14:18:07 2001 From: rbezares at worldonline.es (Raultje) Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 14:18:07 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Free icons. Message-ID: <3A72CA8F.21A39CBD@worldonline.es> Hello all, Do you know if exists a web place where getting free small icons (for buttons,...) for the gis programs? How can I assure they are for free and there were not got for other applications ?. Thanks is advance, Raul. From jan at intevation.de Mon Jan 29 09:59:55 2001 From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 09:59:55 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] Free icons. In-Reply-To: <3A72CA8F.21A39CBD@worldonline.es>; from rbezares@worldonline.es on Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 02:18:07PM +0100 References: <3A72CA8F.21A39CBD@worldonline.es> Message-ID: <20010129095955.A27347@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi Raul, On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 02:18:07PM +0100, Raultje wrote: > Do you know if exists a web place where getting free small icons > (for buttons,...) for the gis programs? > > How can I assure they are for free and there were not got for other > applications ?. this is an interesting question. Some Free GIS Software will soon need many sophisticated icons for improving their GUIs (e.g. GRASS, OSSIM). In principle, the icons should be covered by the same license as the software where they are used. So, if you find a GPLed software with interesting icons, you can use them for your own GPLed project (but you should ask the author/artist to assure they are free). That means also that you don't have an exclusive right to use the icons. I don't know of a site where free icons are available. However, artists should actually get paid for their work so a joint effort could be an alternative to get a collection of icons. It might become difficult since people have quite a different taste converning graphical design :-) Any plans out there so far? Jan -- Jan-Oliver Wagner http://intevation.de/~jan/ Intevation GmbH http://intevation.de/ FreeGIS http://freegis.org/ From fnievinski at cpovo.net Mon Jan 29 18:09:51 2001 From: fnievinski at cpovo.net (Felipe G. Nievinski) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 15:09:51 -0200 Subject: [Freegis-list] Free icons. References: <3A72CA8F.21A39CBD@worldonline.es> Message-ID: <008201c08a16$4b5243d0$0f0110ac@felipe> There is a website at www.mapsymbols.com with a lot of icons and symbols for map production that can be applicable for buttons too. Their data is not GPL'ed, although "This resource relies on the donation and generosity of users throughout the world". Maybe a talk with Brian T. Sheahan (the site maintainer) could make it right. Jan? Regards, Felipe Nievinski. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Raultje" To: Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2001 11:18 AM Subject: [Freegis-list] Free icons. > > Hello all, > > Do you know if exists a web place where getting free small icons > (for buttons,...) for the gis programs? > > How can I assure they are for free and there were not got for other > applications ?. > > Thanks is advance, Raul. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freegis-list mailing list > Freegis-list at intevation.de > http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list > From john at dix.Mines.EDU Mon Jan 29 19:43:57 2001 From: john at dix.Mines.EDU (John Stockwell) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 11:43:57 -0700 (MST) Subject: [Freegis-list] open source SEG-Y viewer wanted In-Reply-To: <20010126180002.B20878@abnoba.intevation.de> Message-ID: Dear Bernhard, >certainly your SU software shares the spirit of Free Software. >And I am glad that you opened up your software widely by this extend >and invite everybody to share the code. Yeah. That's why it's called "Free Software". The package is available free from: http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes I would suggest that you actually read the LEGAL_STATEMENT of SU. It does not prevent anyone from distributing SU for a fee. It merely requires that they obtain written permission from our institution before doing so. I mean, really, is it such a hardship to write a letter? As a matter of explanation, I would point out that we have been distributing SU to the geophysical community as Free Software, under more or less the present license since about 1987. The first Internet release was in September 1992. Indeed, ours was the first free software package explicitly written for exploration seismic processing and research applications. For a description of Free Software in the exploration seismic industry, I suggest that you read: Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1999), The CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x Package, Computers and Geosciences, May 1999. Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1997), Free Software in Education: A case study of CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x, The Leading Edge, July 1997. The primary issue is that the concept of Free Software is so foreign to the exploration seismic community, and the desire for commercialization so strong, that we need to be able wield a "bigger stick" to control the commercialization of the package. As a secondary issue, SU is nothing like the other free software applications that you distribute. SU is a full seismic processing, development, and research environment which is best described as an 'instant research and processing environment.' This is not throwaway software, but rather, this is a package which fills the niche that, in major oil companies, is filled by in-house processing environments. >The reason for allowing redistribution for money in Free Software >criteria is that most repackagers or distributors do a good job. >If the license of the Free Software has a strong protection of freedom >(like the GPL), the vendor cannot disclose the freedom of the software >from the customer. >So the customer is informed about his rights on the software. >Except for extrem cases were the customer is doing absolutly no checking >of the software and alternatives, he is basically paying the value >added by the distributor. Otherwise there is no reason to buy it >from this one distributor. This fosters a competition between >distributors to add value to Free Software which is good. >A lot of them try to add printed documentation, select stable >versions or build them for easier installation. >And other distributors and the authors usually benefit from this. > >A second reason for a redistribution for all purposes without a >permission is the guarrantied continuation of the free software >development process. If I am on the other part of the world with no >internet access and the author of the software is for what reason >ever not reachable, this is not blocking me from fixing bugs and >redistributing this for money. It happened quite a few times that >copyright holders were not reachable and the software redistribution >blocked. A distributor who simply repackages free software and distributes it "as is" is not "adding value" to the package. This is another reason for our particular license. If you were to make an enhanced version of SU, you could sell that under our license, provided that you were clear that you were doing something radically different, and not just fixing a few bugs. You would not be selling the software "as is". A case in point. There is a company called "W_Geosoft" which distributes a graphical front end to a Windows NT version of SU. They make the NT version of SU (called SUNT) available free on their web site, but sell a CD containing SUNT, as well as their graphical frontend to the package. Their distribution of our codes in this fashion is commerical, and yet agrees with the terms of our license, because they do not distribute SU "as is", and we did not require them to do anything, except keep their SUNT version of available on the net for free. They truly have "added value" to the package. >These are two advantages that the SU community might want. >Right now this restriction prevent SU from coming with Debian >GNU/Linux distribution or RedHat distributions. Both groups have a >high profile in adding towards the products they are distributing. >SU might get even more known. The only thing that might prevent a free software distributor from distributing SU is their unwillingness to seek permission to include it in their distribution. Your argument is specious. The RedHat and Debian distributions both contain demo versions of commerical software packages. Indeed, both RedHat and Debian actually supply _commercial_ packages such as Applixware in their pay distributions. No doubt the licenses for distributing these packages are far more stringent than ours. We have never solicited anyone to distribute our code, nor has any other distributor offered to distribute our codes. Our market is far too specialized for us to show up on their radar screens. >(Disclosure: My company also does repackaging of Free Software, >like the FreeGIS CD (which we sell for 25Euro). >Right now we cannot distribute SU on it, because we want other >distributors to be able to use our additions without asking.) Well, we are talking about "Free Software" not "Free Lunch". (Really, would it kill you to write a letter?) >Regards, > Bernhard John Stockwell | john at dix.Mines.EDU Center for Wave Phenomena (The Home of Seismic Un*x) Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO 80401 | http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes voice: (303) 273-3049 Our new book: Norman Bleistein, Jack K. Cohen, John W. Stockwell Jr., [2000], Mathematics of multidimensional seismic imaging, migration, and inversion, (Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, V. 13.), Springer-Verlag, New York. From silke at intevation.de Wed Jan 31 19:40:31 2001 From: silke at intevation.de (Silke Reimer) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 19:40:31 +0100 Subject: [Freegis-list] GPSMan 5.3.1 Message-ID: <20010131194031.B28609@abnoba.intevation.de> Hi everybody, here is a forwarded message of the author of the GPSManager... ----- Forwarded message from Miguel Filgueiras ----- Delivered-To: silke at intevation.de X-Mailer: exmh version 2.2 06/23/2000 (debian 2.2-1) with nmh-1.0.4+dev To: wolfgang at wsrcc.com, feliks at magister.smr.ru, rthomas at clear-logic.com, mop83338 at mail.telepac.pt, leoaloha at erols.com, eros at boiled.net, ifortunato at mail.telepac.pt, Andreas.Lange at rhein-main.de, sr.jong at simnet.is, f.jordan at unidui.uni-duisburg.de, KevinHaywood at netscape.net, John.Madore at th.u-psud.fr, randysmith at adelphia.net, mckeehan at us.ibm.com, rod at cookies.demon.co.uk, traber at inetmail.de, f.stefani at gaponline.de, kevin at desertsol.com, jim at cx565280-a.vista1.sdca.home.com, jan at intevation.de, kevin at javajedi.com, alpalmas at tin.it, msabers at sabers.net, harald.stauss at web.de, pschroth at hetnet.nl, glenpm at usa.net, odebre at wanadoo.fr, Aubreville at t-online.de, scb at stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp, Vitor.Cavadas at PT01.nestle.com, thomastheussing at compuserve.com, gertchie at earthlink.net, sgerhardt at home.com, niki.hammler at web.de, yuf at phoenixdsl.com, lehmann at fh-nuertingen.de, rkv at wakkanet.fi, john at coastalgeology.org, seniorr at aracnet.com, Francesco.Decomite at lifl.fr, forster.urs at bluewin.ch, axel at 7val.com, stefan.heinen at djh-freeweb.de, heinen at synopsys.com, ost at comnets.rwth-aachen.de, paulo at wollny.com.br, jsotoni at netribeiraopreto.com.br, raghavan at media.osaka-cu.ac.jp, crysopa at terra.com.br, koenig at tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de, racr at fccn.pt, rljames at netacc.net, jon at courgette.jml.net, DTOITN at telkom.co.za, janc at wanadoo.es, tamon at poem.ocn.ne.jp, michael.g.koch at web.de, seabra at aac.uc.pt Cc: Silke Reimer , Brian Baulch , rvr at ncc.up.pt, mig at ncc.up.pt Subject: GPSMan 5.3.1 Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 12:21:29 +0000 From: Miguel Filgueiras Hello, This is to announce version 5.3.1 of GPSMan, available from http://www.ncc.up.pt/~mig/gpsman.html and in the next few days from the ftp site at sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/science/cartography This is a minor update, that cures some small bugs (the worst had to do with changing the map scale), and that makes it possible to create waypoints automatically when drawing a route on the map (suggested by Stefan Heinen). Please see below for news concerning downloading and compatibility issues under Debian. I am glad to inform that GPSMan was selected for inclusion in the next release of the Free-GIS CD produced by Intevation (http://freegis.org). With sincere thanks to all who helped, Best regards, Miguel Filgueiras ------------------ For those having 5.3 there are small archives with the files that were changed as well as the new versions of the manual, meaning that downloading the full distribution may be avoided. The Debian package is known to be dependant of the versions of libraries we have in our machines here. For those having older Debian installations an archive with the sources is available that can be compiled locally (see the instructions in the WWW pages). The new version of the C programs to lock the serial port follow the new definitions in liblockdev version 1.0; this affects the program getport.c, but in the aux directory we kept the previous version under the name getport.c-old. ----- End forwarded message -----