My WiserEarth community membership has given me a kind of freedom, where I can share my vision and thoughts. It was a very unique experience when I first laid my eyes on WiserEarth while I was searching for sustainable solutions on Google. At the time, I was assisting my friend with her report on environmental impact assessment and planning. WiserEarth is an inclusive project which aims to unite people of similar thoughts. I am writing this article to discuss certain things which I would love to share with the WiserEarth community.

I have always shied away from social networking sites. I don’t know why I was so repulsed. But I found WiserEarth more interesting thanks to its innovations, its ideas and because of the good friends I have now found.

The use of this platform has helped me to enhance knowledge-sharing and supported me in developing social connections with interesting groups of people. Getting straight to the point, it’s a common interface which has enabled me to share my thoughts with a worldwide sustainability audience.

I have now connected with thirty very good friends: good friends because their portfolio inspires me to work more on sustainability initiatives for society, and the environment.

As a member, I have found the following on WiserEarth:

Wiser Relationships

WiserEarth enables you to express yourself among experts and non-experts in the sustainability field. Moreover, as you interact with people on WiserEarth, you get to know them . People with similar interests can build trust in one another, which eventually leads to more meaningful relationships.

Wiser Environment for Mind Sharing

While interacting with people on WiserEarth, you get a unique perspective into their lives and their problems regarding sustainability. You can help advise them, and in turn, you will receive advice and trust from other members, resulting in mind sharing.

Wiser Network that educates you:

While WiserEarth can enhance informal learning on environment and society, it also supports social connections within groups of learners and with those involved in the support of learning. The WiserEarth platform can broadly be used by members of an organization, for sharing their activities, and inviting other members to make an action plan. Thus this network is helping all of us develop communities for good practice.

Bringing Visibility to International Projects

WiserEarth showcases many international projects which hail from my hometown of Orissa, India. For example, there are many initiatives in undeveloped regions of Orissa. A few distinguished fellow academic researchers from Florida have initiated a bio-diesel project for bringing electricity to villages with no power (Ref: news article published in a local daily newspaper). There are many other examples of eco-village project initiatives by OREDA, rural health projects by NRHM and wildlife management planning by WWF-India. In India, we are very much encouraged by such projects, for which we have great hopes. Building visibility for these projects is important though.

To sum up, it’s been a wonderful experience to be a part of the amazing “WE” community. I share (as many others in the community do) in the need for a noble plan for our very dear planet Earth, its environment and its society.  In our evolution from a Primate to a Homo Sapien, we became guardians of the most awesome creation called “Earth”.  I believe that building a community for a wiser development of our earth and future sustainability is an achievement WE must work on together.

by Jay Pattnaik (Jaypattnaik), follow this article.

What is free and open source software and why would I want it?

This question is not specific to GIS, and there are lots of places to explore it. Here are just a few:

• The Open Source Initiative
• The Free Software Foundation

Does this stuff actually work? How do I pick one?

In general, yes. The caveat is that your definition of “works” depends on the package and what you want to do with it. Some good rules of thumb for choosing a package are:

• Pick something widely used in organizations like yours.Look at the activity on the mailing list. If the list looks “dead”, you might want to keep looking. Are the people on the list from organizations like yours? USGS uses a lot of free software. Look for them on the list. Are they doing things you want to do? You’ll be in a better position to get support if there are users with similar problems.
• Pick community-based software.Some packages are projects that are completely based in a single company, others are dependent on a single person. The first can be vulnerable to budget cuts, the second could be vulnerable to the vagaries of modern life. If a package is based in a company, look for one with outside developers. If a package is the responsibility of an individual, look for a long track record and relationships with other developers and packages.
• Look for software that does what you want to do.Sounds obvious enough, but it can be easy to fall for software with an interface that looks familiar. Look through the mail list archives for people who are doing similar work.

How do I get support?

Most support for free software packages is through mailing lists. You’ll find some through project web sites, or on central resources like MapTools.org. The advantage to this method is that it works well world-wide, regardless of time zones or business hours. The GIS free software community is small enough that you’ll often see the software authors answering questions.

Some firms sell support for free software packages. Please let me know if you have names of support companies for free GIS software to contribute.

What kinds of free and open source GIS software are available?

Free and open source software now encompasses the entire gamut of GIS needs. Most of these packages don’t have a marketing department, so you have to find them. Software source sites are included in the list that follows this FAQ.

What arethe barriers to using free software?

If you’re just starting with GIS, there aren’t any.

If you have an extensive installed base consider the following:

• If you are a manageryou’ll need to evaluate training needs. Remember that if you have customized packages in-house you’re training anyway. Talk with someone who manages a shop based on free GIS software and see how they’re fairing. And start small. Add a free web map server to your repertoire, for example, before changing any existing applications. Make sure any changes you make are simple and effective, and don’t worry about going all proprietary or all open source. Purity is hardly the point.
• If you’re a staff memberthink about how to make something work, or work better, with free software before approaching your manager. They have to live with the fallout from your idea. And it really shouldn’t be difficult to make improvements using free and open source software.
• If you want to move your operating system to Linux , make sure you have support for it or use Knoppix. You have enough to do with GIS without adding system administration duties to your list.

Computing Environment

Can I run open source GIS software in windows?

Yes. It can be harder, depending on the software you want to run. For example, here’s the page describing what you have to do to install PostGIS in windows. It runs through Cygwin , a Linux environment that runs within windows. That’s a lot of layers to go through. Your mileage may vary.

FreeGIS.org keeps a good list of free GIS software that runs on windows, some of it in “native” windows and some through Cygwin.

What about my Mac?

If you’re on MacOS X you shouldn’t have any problem at all: it’s a kind of Unix. FreeGIS.org keeps a list of free GIS software that runs on it.

What if I want to run something on Linux, but feel particularly clueless on the topic?

Never fear. Try one of the bootable CDs from the Knoppix project. No installation required. There’s even one specifically for GIS.

Java

Java is a consideration. If you need a variety of Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) on a single machine, you can start to have conflicts. Some of the open source GIS packages are built on Java. If you choose one of them, pay attention to the JVM requirements, and take note of any JVMs that are already installed on the machine. You may wish to use non-Java packages to avoid these conflicts.

What are pre-compiled binaries? Do I want them?

If you haven’t compiled your own software before, yes, these are probably what you want. Most Unix systems assume you’re going to want to custom compile some of your software. The tools to do it are provided with the operating system, and they’re simple to use. Windows doesn’t supply these tools. If you’re running windows, it’s easiest to get pre-compiled software that was specifically built for windows.