eGeomate: Predictions 2010: GIS Software

TRANSLATION NOTE: Please read the comments at the end of the post to clarify the real meaning of some terms.

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A couple of days, at the warmth of a stick coffee (Spanish Idiom: “café de palo” a kind of coffee entirely prepared at home without any electrical artifact) made by my mother-in-law, we did some hallucinations on marked trends for 2010 in the Internet area. For geospatial environment, the situation is more static (if not boring); because much in this is already said in the medium term by the big brands, but for not squandering the coffee cup of this time and the preamble of the year’s end, here it goes.

Commercial software (not free): Little news. The positioning between ESRI, Bentley and Autodesk seems not to vary (at least in the Hispanic environment) and in terms of innovation, there’s almost five years ago that the novelty of interacting with xml and OGC standards is no longer surprising.

Also as much as is claimed, improving vector editing capabilities in GIS and CAD visualization are issues that go for long.

Thus, in Autodesk’s case, as far as we will see is AutoCAD 2011, with which people already has get used to the contextual ribbon (Ribbon) and begins to linger over how valuable came in that time. It is possible that Civil 3D may give us surprises, but not much, the software maturity and the balance for not misleading users with many follies will continue. We also know, Autodesk does not make extreme developments in odd years (of release, not of calendar), just makeup, this reassures us because we will see a new .dwg format until in 2011 when it will be announced AutoCAD 2011.

In Bentley’s case we will see more crazy things, but only at an extreme smoke (Spanish Idiom “fumada” in this case means extreme ideas) level. I-model, for the moment, will only affect project Wise and Publisher at a proposal level; because, in my opinion, Bentley seeks to recover its select added-value and spread the XFM. Their plans for medium term will not be seen in 2010. Perhaps for this year we’ll see early Bentley Cadastre implementations participating in the Be Inspired whose involvement should be sublime smokes (Spanish idiom: “fumadas”, very creative ideas), in this matter I have three light foreboding that I prefer not to disclose.

Regarding ESRI, I don’t have the slightest idea of what we might expect, a 9.4 version? I doubt it. For tools with this position level (in sales and piracy) is hard to feel that it can mature more, although open neighborhood friends take it in the execution wall (Spanish Idiom: “paredón” a thick wall where people is murdered) of Macondo (*).

As for Manifold GIS, it would be most aggressive, possibly before June we’ll see Manifold 9. The bit we’ve read in the master wills leave by Dimitry, I perceived insistence with CUDA and a continue forcing to people into 64 bits, which is what they call speed. A pity, because long ago they should have enter in a proactive way into agreements with the brands; at least with dwg and dgn formats that have fallen in a poor level justified in their own irony that swings between real and bad taste.

If something is expected from Manifold is that these friends will really smoke from the Green (Spanish Idiom: “fumar de la verde” in this case implies that they generate many ideas that turn into creative), we won’t be surprised if they put a lot more crazy functionality on the toy, which gradually improve its position regarding the great. But I think we’ll see more madness at database level and interoperability, and little in construction level and vector editing.

Open source:  A search for sustainability. Nobody said this is not a commercial one; the words free and not free (or unfree) are appropriate to separate the segments.

Mere appreciations, but in my opinion, gvSIG with its stable version 1.9 will be solving small bugs and creating alliances that gain sustainability and positioning. This term seems complicated if we give microphone to sociologists; I like most how agronomists describe it:

“Some trees are not a forest, because there must be a favorable environment and an amount to be considered sustainable”.

In gvSIG’s case, they will follow these alliances started towards Europe, interior of Spain and Latin America. A basic reason: who will give continuity to crazy versions as Windows 7 if the Generality is not interested much further in Mr. Bill Gates, or the thousand flavors restrained in Linux repositories. And for this, they need to create sustainability networks of hybrid context: academy, private sector, public sector, which can be ready for seeing things of gvSIG 2.0.

The case of the absurd roll (Spanish Idiom: “papelón”, series of wrong actions which make someone to feel ashamed) played by initiatives as OSGeo, FIG and open GIS Consortium, it is expected they will continue moving floor on the farm, with greater representativeness from the Hispanic community and a balance between free and unfree.

The others, the unfree ones, it’s probable we’ll have a new version of Portable GIS, to update stable platforms and integrates a pair of more screwdrivers.  In my opinion, we’ll see a bit new with the others that has gotten maturity like Quantum GIS, Grass and Udig; these have more pressure to built sustainability than to build innovations.

I don’t reject interesting news, what happens is that as (not free) small initiatives, their ability to make noise have little impact in the Hispanic environment. At least, not as gvSIG, that with each little problem they take out a big news item to spread out (Spanish Idiom: “con cada clavito saca la jolota a volar”, in this case means that gvSIG takes advantage of everything they perceive will be useful), it has worked more being systematic depending the size of the problem (Spanish Idiom:”clavo”); and that builds sustainability.

If it were for me, I would loose some preferences for non-free software, what happens is that gvSIG has to think in Windows users (95%) that with 90,000 plots suffer the slowness of the Java environment and that different policies prevent them from switching to Linux immediately (Spanish idiom: “de romplón” directly and as fast as it could be).

Also much of the open source will be around of what happens with MySQL now that Oracle has the perfect smoke between the second and third toes (more the third). It’s partially good, because many expect mad news outlets from PostgreSQL and PostGIS.

Other herbs: The unpredictability.  Google Earth, in my opinion, in about three years could have many capacities of building and analysis over the fuckin kml and OGC services.  It’s probable that the facility of establishing it without consulting (Spanish idiom: “enchutarlo a la braca”) as a standard to Consortium produce products on third parties developers, this would make Google insist on giving the value it deserves (to them), a platform of gorilopólica (*) navigation.   (This last think should be understand in the context of the UTM zones 15 and 16 added with the effect of the coffee from that lady)

I think nothing more could be said, this is the neighborhood of the products around here.  CadCorp, MapInfo and SuperGIS are from other neighborhood, and this maintains the post in the short-sightedness of the local farm.

TRANSLATION NOTES:

Macondo: Is an imaginary location where it takes place Gabriel García Marquez’s novel “A hundred years of solely”.

Gorilopólica: An author’s license in creating a new word by the fusion of “gorilla” and “monopolic”. Its figurative meaning alludes to such a very strong platform where the user can play all the tasks he could like. (In this case referred to Google Earth functionalities)