Buzz: gvSIG
One of the great things about being a journalist is that people pull you aside and say, “You have to see this!” This time the software in question was gvSIG and person doing the pulling was a former colleague. I’ve already written about gvGIS for an OGC publication. That provides much of the background.
It’s been two years since I wrote that piece and last week, I had a chance to meet with many of the 10 person contingent from Spain who represented the project at FOSS4G. They provided a some interesting updates, numbers and insights.
- The team includes two rather large main contractors and a host of smaller ones. There are also volunteers. That’s about 40 developers, with total staff (including management) at about 70-80.
- The current funding includes E12 million that runs from 2007 until 2013.
- There are 1000 subscribers on the project list, and the project has been downloaded 70,000 times.
- The plan for success included the idea of starting small, proving the result worked and growing the project from there. The guiding principle is “we have to share knowledge” and the group is anxious to show the success of this new model for collaboration.
- The original users, whose regional government required a move to open source software under Linux, had been ArcView users. Thus, gvSIS looks like ArcView. And, like ArcView it has lots of extensions. The ones ticked off by the team rivaled the list available for ArcView 3 in its prime. One of the stronger (and most popular) includes CAD-like editing with a command line (like AutoCAD and MicroStation).
- gvSIG supports all sorts of databases: PostGIS, MySQL, Oracle, ArcSDE and serves as a client to many map servers: WMS, WFS, Gazeteer, ArcIMS, GeoRSS.
- gvSIG is also a development platform that can be customized using Python, and other scripting tools.
- Upcoming extensions include: more advanced/complete network analysis, 3D, animation, enhanced symbology, raster analysis, geostatistics, mobile…
- gvSIG supports multiple languages from a pull-down.
- The 3rd gvSIG Conference is November 14-16 in the Valencia Conference Centre in Spain.
