Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

There’s a fantastic article in today’s Guardian (via Computer World Magazine) about the International Intellectual Property Alliance, who say that countries advocating the use of open source software should be put on a “Specialist 301 list” (ie a trading watch list) because open source “weakens the software industry” and “fails to build respect for intellectual property”.  The IIPA is an umbrella group for organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, who are of course well-known for their open-mindedness and forward thinking.

Go read the articles, I’ll wait…

As well as the obvious lack of understanding of, well, anything, this is all quite bizarre. It implies disapproval of almost the entire internet infrastructure, as well as the big (US) players like Google. It shows a complete lack of understanding about companies (in the US) making a revenue from an open source business model, or even including open source software within their offerings. And how you can claim that the open source licenses somehow harm intellectual property is beyond me.

Oh well, I guess that puts the British Government on the watchlist, as well as the US government, and presumably the IIPA need to put themselves on if they use Apache at all…

This week I have actually been doing some real GIS work for a change, rather than going to meetings, writing bids, writing reports, fixing computer problems and showing other people how to do stuff. I think this is the first time in approx 2 years that I’ve done this, and I was pathetically excited about the prospect at the beginning of the week.

It has also been an opportunity for me to really put my money where my mouth is, regarding using open source GIS, since last time I did some real analysis it was with the Redlands offerings. So, I loaded up PostgreSQL and PostGIS, and Quantum GIS with the Grass plugin and Shapefile to PostGIS Import Tool (SPIT), and wrangled half a million polygons of historic landscape data into submission (ie merged, dissolved, reclassified, cut, pasted and cleaned).

I have a confession to make. It was easy! It was quick! I hardly had to go near the command line (with the exception of creating indices and merging tables in postgis).  OK, I had a few crashes (mainly python errors in windows) and I had to try a couple of different approaches to get my dissolves and merges to work, but I would expect that with any program dealing with large amounts of data.

I’ve been evangelising about open source GIS for a number of years now, but until now I’ve had to take other people’s word on the performance aspect. It’s always nice to get your own personal confirmation about something (albeit in a totally un-scientific, non benchmark sort of way), and even better, to have it exceed expectations.

So, to all you developers out there- thanks!