Open Source Computing and GIS in the UK

Over the last couple of weeks, a few people have asked me the same question, which is (to paraphrase) “what’s the difference between Portable GIS and OSGeo Live or USB GIS?”. You get asked something once, and that’s fine, but more than that and it’s worth a blog post!

The main difference between the two options is that OSGeo Live and USB GIS are bootable disks. You plug the USB stick (or DVD) into your computer, reboot, and you’re presented with a fully configured Linux environment, with all the software ready to use.  While you’re in that environment, you can work as normal, but when you reboot, you’re back to your own OS. These options are cross-platform- they will work with windows, linux, or mac- as long as your machine can accept booting from a Live DVD or USB Stick.

Portable GIS is different. It is designed to work within windows, and only from a USB stick. Download the excutable, install it onto a suitably quick USB stick, open the menu application, and you’re good to go. You have access to all your standard windows resources, and can save your data either to the stick (if you have space) or to any other drive on your pc. The limitation is that it will only work within windows.

I think there’s a place for both options. Live DVDs/USB Sticks are great for a training environment where you want everyone to have exactly the same setup, where it looks identical, and has all the same data and passwords. I use the OSGeo Live DVD all the time for training, and give copies away liberally at events. I haven’t tried USB GIS yet but knowing the guys at Faunalia it’s bound to be good.

Portable GIS, on the other hand,  is good when you want to work on the same software at home as you do at work, in the operating system that you’re familiar with, and you want to transfer your data between the two. I think it will also work in a lot of locked down environments (though I don’t guarantee anything, because sysadmins can be wily creatures).

So, where are we at with the new version? I’m getting together the various packages and trying to find my notes about the secret sauce that makes them all run portably. Expect it to be a bit stripped down- there was some repetition of components last time, and I’m more interested in something that will run on a smaller disk and take less time to download and install. I’ll keep you posted!

Earlier this week I did a couple of presentations for the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) Welsh Group, along with my colleague Matt and a couple of people from Dotted Eyes, another company doing a lot of work with Open Source here in the UK. I did an introductory presentation on open source and the OSGeo “stack”, and then one demonstrating the capabilities of Quantum GIS. You can see my slides here and here. Be warned, the QGIS talk was actually a live demo, so the slides are just emergency screenshots in case the live demo crashed and burned! (It didn’t crash and burn, which was nice!)

We had a short round-table set of introductions before kicking off the talks properly, and it was really interesting to see what people hoped to get out of the day. A lot of the people there were very keen to identify desktop GIS alternatives, whereas in the past the discussion has tended to be about the database and web components. People are now relatively familiar with using PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and Mapserver/Geoserver, and usually OpenLayers or something similar. This battle has been won, I think, whereas for desktops it’s a different matter.

It’s quite clear now that Quantum GIS is a perfectly acceptable dekstop GIS package. I don’t accept any of the FUD that still goes around about its capabilities or stability. The people at the AGI Cymru event were definitely impressed with what it can do these days. Some of them had tried it a few years ago when, let’s be honest, it wasn’t so good, and are now prepared to take another look, which is a big win. However, in the majority of cases there was concern about how you’d go about deploying a totally new GIS package in an organisation where users may have worked with their current package for decades or more. This, to me, is not an open source issue, though it’s often portrayed as one. This issue will be a problem every time a new piece of software is deployed, be it open or closed source, and indeed if a new version of an old favourite has a re-design (Microsoft Office, I’m thinking of you).  I’m not sure how we get around this really, other than by understanding the motivations and concerns that people have, and trying to work within those limitations. Softly, softly, catchy monkey…

So, what else did we talk about? Linked data, both consuming and producing. Strategies for deploying open source within an organisation. IBM’s advice on Open Source in 2006 and whether or not it still holds true (yes, mostly). A good day!

It has been a while since I posted, and while I’m probably the only person bothered by that, I thought I ought to put an update together!

The blog has been going for over 5 years now, and in that time, in the UK, the attitude towards open source software has changed completely. There are now a lot of people who “get” open source, and are quite vocal in combating the FUD which we still unfortunately see from time to time. I don’t see the point in posting if all I’m going to say is “I agree with that person over there” so I have refrained from posting unless I feel very strongly about something.

Then there’s wordpress. Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of fighting a losing battle against hackers, despite my best efforts. I find it hard to engage with my blog when I feel like I can’t really trust the software. So it’s time to move platforms- though finding the time to do that with minimum disruption is proving a little daunting!

Finally, and here’s the good news and the only really “geo” part of this post- I am about to kick off an upgrade of portable GIS. No, really! For a while I wondered if it was worth the bother as it has got so much easier to deploy all the packages on windows, with the awesome OSGeo4W, and the plethora of bootable USB options if all you want to do is try the packages out. However, portable GIS is still downloaded plenty of times a month, and I occasionally get plaintive emails asking for it to be updated. Not only that, but we’re organising some training courses on open source GIS and quite frankly portable GIS kicks *ss for that purpose. So, watch this space!

There has been a lot of fairly excitable posting recently about the continuing rise of OpenStreetMap, and how it’s now being used in place of Google Maps,  in particular since Google started charging for data. People have been talking about how “authoritative” crowd-sourced spatial data can be, and to be honest, I’ve found that the discussions seem to have missed the point a little bit. For me at least. So- here’s a few of my personal thoughts about OpenStreetMap and why it will be a while before I will consider it authoritative at least.

Firstly, a caveat. I love OpenStreetMap data and the whole ecosystem of “stuff” that has evolved around it. I contribute occasionally, though not as often as I’d like to. I’m pleased that it has forced the “traditional” data providers to reconsider what they offer, and perhaps to raise their game. I think it’s one of the main reasons why the idea of “open data” is so well known that even my Gran knows about it.

However, in the process of trying out WalkingPapers (my favourite addition to the OpenStreetMap ecosphere), I printed out the area around my house- in the centre of Lancaster. Not London, I admit, but still in the centre of a city. My road wasn’t on there. Read on, before you give up in disgust, saying “pah, you should just correct any errors you find”. How did I know my road was missing? There wasn’t an unfinished stub, with a note saying “I went home for my tea and I’ll finish this section tomorrow”, it was as if my road did not exist. I only knew my road was missing because I live there, and I have no readily available tools to help me judge the accuracy of an area that I am not familiar with. So, the idea that the end-user should correct any errors they find doesn’t really hold because you’re not always going to know that there’s an error!

I am aware that the traditional data providers do not produce totally error-free data. However, I would expect Ordnance Survey (for example) to have a workflow for their surveyors that doesn’t allow them to simply give up when they get bored or have to go home for their tea, or perhaps not survey a street because they don’t go down it very often.  I can also go to the site and find published information on positional accuracy if I need it. I guess I’m equating “authority” with trust, or reliability, and the issue is less about what’s there, than what’s not there.

When OpenStreetMap is being used as a static base map, by which I mean a backdrop to the information your map is really about, this is less of an issue. But, if like me, you come from a discipline where maps are collections of data to be manipulated and analysed, then you need to be able to trust your data a little more, or at least have a quantitative understanding of what the error is likely to be.

I know that this is not an easy question to answer, and I know people are trying to figure out ways of answering it. I also know it’s not that important for a lot of people, but I would like to see a more nuanced debate- I think that would be better for OpenStreetMap in the end.