von hier
via James Fee
kurze Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch (mein English ist aber nicht so doll, bitte Bescheid geben, wenn ich jetzt was verdreht darstelle, ok?)
Jo Cook ist der Information Systems Coordinator bei der northern office of Oxford Archa…

von hier
via James Fee
kurze Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch (mein English ist aber nicht so doll, bitte Bescheid geben, wenn ich jetzt was verdreht darstelle, ok?)
Jo Cook ist der Information Systems Coordinator bei der northern office of Oxford Archa…

Thanks for stopping by. GRASS is certainly one of the options we are now using, although the steep learning curve makes it slightly hard for new users. The issue with map layers is that we need ordnance survey data as background to our surveys most of the time, so digitising isn’t really an option (legally). Openstreetmap is coming on nicely and now works well for some of our requirements.

Jo

I had to chuckle when I saw your comment because you’re the kind of people we really want to reach with the “open archaeology” argument. We want to prove that it’s possible to manage perfectly well, if not better, with open source software rather than paying for commercial software particularly if you don’t need all the functionality. So- come and talk to us, we can certainly advise on that side of things!

We have worked on similar GIS packages for some of the other big projects, but to be honest our focus is now on more interoperable software and packages, and web-based stuff.

All the best

Jo

I just think it’s a weird facet of contract archaeology that some units have charitable status, when it comes to buying software I’m just envious, as at the full exorbitant market price it’s pretty much impossible for me to make a business case for buying anything but the most basic ESRI product, which will of course contain 500 tools I don’t need. What actually bothers me is that I think having such large units as Oxford and Wessex having charitable status might not be good for the archaeological market/wages (not as bad as university & council units though). But this is surely a BAJR rant…

On a different note, I liked the Perry Oaks GIS package, has Oxford done similar with other non-Framework packages?

Cheers,
Richard

I totally agree that it’s going more mainstream and it’s great to see a university course in it. Regarding the licensing, well, apparently these things take time to resolve, according to ESRI. They gave us a month’s grace on our existing licenses, but that feels a little like “good cop, bad cop” to me, and we are feverishly trying to figure out how to to everything we need to in a different package. Gvsig is our current best contender, as it has a lot of the functionality we need, but we also have to contend with a certain amount of (perfectly justified panic) from staff who are going to be in rather a difficult position at the end of the month when they need to swap to the new package. So there’s a lot of user discussion going on. Expect more blog posts when it’s all sorted one way or another…

http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/prospectus/courses/compsci-opensource.php

Meanwhile, how are things going with the ESRI licence issue, and have you started your migration to OS yet?

@Richard- sorry to see that you have some kind of issue with Oxford Archaeology- what’s the basis for that exactly? Given that we are an educational charity, and therefore subject to all sorts of regulations how we can make money and what we can do with it, then I don’t really see how this decision of ESRI’s makes for a level playing field between us and non-charitable companies. Fancy giving up your profits? We’re also pretty happy with what we do to fulfil our educational remit and have a board of trustees who’s very function is to make sure we do that.

Good luck in escaping ESRI though, I’m playing with Manifold.