Why open source GIS matters, why you should use it, and what it can do.

1. Albert Decatur (albert.decatur@gmail.com)
web mapping and open source GIS

2. why is web mapping important?
group collaboration is
more powerful than
individual
achievement
1

3. draftsman’s work, 1937
many hours, one map 2

4. OpenStreetMap, 2010
200,000 contributors, one map 3

5. I, Pencil

6. I, Pencil
"No one person . . . could
create from scratch a small,
everyday pencil, let alone a
car or an airplane."
- Leonard Read, 1958
5

7. why is open source important?

8. why is open source important?
"Given enough eyeballs, all
bugs are shallow."
- Eric S. Raymond,
co-founder of the Open
Source Initiative
7

9. why is open source important?
free beer

10. why is open source important?
free speech

11. why is open source important?
“Think free as in free
speech, not free beer.”
- Richard Stallman, founder
of the Free Software
Foundation
10

12. who uses open source?
90% of supercomputers
60% of internet servers
30% of smart phones
11

13. who uses open source GIS?
ESRI
IDRISI
ERDAS
Google
many others . . .
12

14. why should you use it?
portable
dependable
free
13

15. make a heatmap of Wikipedia article word length
demo: Wikipedia in Hawaii
14

16. demo: Wikipedia in Hawaii
Let’s see this in action:
1. Run a script
2. Run commands on the
output
3. Add to a server
4. Display from the server
make a heatmap of Wikipedia article word length
15

17. demo: Wikipedia in Hawaii
script to retrieve georeferenced Wikipedia articles, their
abstracts, and word count 16

18. demo: Wikipedia in Hawaii
heatmap of Wikipedia article word length
17

19. demo: Wikipedia in Hawaii
we will use these
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20. on to the demo . . .