Free Geography Tools

New versions of two open-source GIS programs are out:

- Quantum GIS (aka qGIS) has released version 0.9 (”Ganymede”). Only the Windows version of the official 0.9 release is currently available, but versions of the last 0.9 preview release are available for both Linux and Macintosh, and presumably the official release for both those platforms will be available shortly on the official website.

A quick comparison of version 0.9 with the previous release (0.8.1, “Titan”) shows some added shapefile editing features (Add Ring and Add Island), and toolbar buttons for options that were previously only available via menus (e.g. opening GRASS mapsets, map decorations); I’m sure there are more, but there’s no manual or new features list yet for the new version (the excellent 0.8 manual is still available).

- The open-source GIS gvSIG has just released version 1.1 (available for Windows, Linux and Mac). I haven’t looked at this GIS in a while, but according to the Directions Magazine blog, there’s a lot going on. They have about 40 developers (and 70-80 total staff) working on it, and have 11 million euros of funding from 2007 to 2013. And while the feature-set is OK now, it looks like some strong capabilities will be added in the near future via extensions (e.g. 3D, animation, geostatistics). The only downside from an Anglocentric perspective is that documentation in English tends to lag releases a bit, understandable since the program is being developed in Spain: the last working manual link is currently for version 0.6 (the version 1.0 manual link is broken as of now, but hopefully will be fixed soon) fixed; manual for 1.0 is now available in English. This may be a GIS worth keeping an eye on, especially as the new extensions come out.