Thursday, May 7. 2009

Open Source GIS Alive and Well in Massachusetts

There's another of those local paper stories about how GIS is good at explaining how Sudbury, MA is taking advantage of the technology. It has the quotes from local officials about how they use it and plans for future use. It even cites pricing:

To create the fly-over, the aerial photograph, and the GIS data development used for the different data layers, Sudbury paid about $100,000. Additionally, the town pays $3,500 annually for unlimited use of MapsOnline.

The one thing that's not noted in the article which focuses on PeopleGIS implementation of MapsOnline in Sudbury and Weston is that the underlying code is open source. The reason it's not noted, I'd guess, is not because anyone is trying to hide anything, but because it doesn't matter. The software does what it's supposed to, the company hired to implement it supports the implementation and town workers and citizens use it. The Sudbury app is available to the public here.