FOSS4G 2011 anticipates about 1,000 people to attend this year’s global conference in Denver this week. Over 13,000 (reference) attendees were at the 2011 Esri International User Conference. Now, Esri’s suite of software and “other” products is quite large. But so is the FOSS4G suite. In fact, here’s twitter’s @spara’s fantastic mind map that shows most of the FOSS4G projects as well as the Esri products, just to give a visual of how much is out there:
So this leads one to wonder…Is the FOSS4G user-base really only 1/13th that of Esri’s? There is a lot of evangelism out there on the superiority of FOSS4G products. Is this just hype, then, or is it reality? If reality, then FOSS4G has a huge user-base out there waiting to embrace it.
#1 by Peter Batty on September 12, 2011 - 2:08 pm
Hi Gretchen, I’d make a few comments. First, market share is not necessarily related to “product superiority”. Open source products have grown significantly in capability over the past few years and there is a very large long-established user base of ESRI customers, most of whom I doubt have done a serious evaluation of their current products against the latest open source products. Even if they do that and find open source to be “superior”, there is a lot of inertia and politics that might mean they don’t change. I would not argue that either open source or closed source geospatial products are “superior” to one another, I think that’s a silly argument on the whole. What I would say is that organizations evaluating geospatial software should make sure they educate themselves about open source options and evaluate them, and they may well be surprised if all they have looked at previously is the traditional closed source vendors. They may well find that certain open source products have a role to play in what they are trying to do. Are you coming to FOSS4G by the way? The one day intro event tomorrow is a great way to get a quick education on what’s happening in the open source world!
#2 by Gretchen on September 12, 2011 - 2:23 pm
@Peter: Thanks for commenting. Market share is a function of quality, marketing, price, customer inertia, and momentum of product. Speaking just on the quality issue, I think the main things those who are vocal supporters of FOSS4G like to point out is that these products are of a quality that is, if not “superior”, than at least equal to that of commercial GIS software. Certainly organizations needs to evaluate everything that’s out there and I think the conference is helping to get that information out to those who need it. I’m a user of Arc desktop, GRASS, and QGIS, but I’m hoping to broaden my horizons in the future. If nothing else, it is good, as you say, to know what’s available. If I do attend conferences, I always make a last-minute decision and simply arrive if I can. My other half will be there though!
#3 by Kris Peterson on September 12, 2011 - 9:01 pm
Inertia is the perfect word here. As an example, if you look at desktop GIS software, namely ESRI’s product line and GRASS GIS, they came out at approximately the same time: 1982. However, when you look at the differences in marketing between the two, they are incomparable. And as much as many dislike marketing, the plain truth is that it works and those who use it effectively will gain more market share and thus inertia. It goes without saying which one of the two products above has a larger marketing budget. (As Peter suggests, there’s a large political component here too – it’s a safe bet that the GRASS development team doesn’t have a lobbyist in D.C.)
As both Peter and Gretchen pointed out, whether one product is more “superior” than the other is a contextual question – it depends both on the organization using the product and how it’s being used. I have used quite a few of the technologies identified on @spara’s mind-map, both open source and proprietary. Although I certainly trend toward open source solutions, the ultimate technology choice depends on what I’m doing, who’s on my team, and who I’m working for.
That being said regarding contextual choices, I do think open source solutions (at least in the GIS/mapping realm) tend to be more developer-friendly. If we look at the FOSS4G agenda, there is a majority of developer-related sessions. It’s been several years since I was last at an ESRI UC, but I seem to remember more user-oriented sessions. And the fact is, there are many more GIS users than there are developers.
I don’t think this is good or bad one way or the other. In fact it’s nice to have so many choices, and conferences like FOSS4G are wonderful for exploring them.
Cheers,
Gretchen’s other half