[Talk-ht] Working with OpenStreetMap and ArcGIS

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Thu Oct 13 07:11:11 BST 2011


Hi,

On 10/13/2011 05:07 AM, Nicholas Doiron wrote:
> Many organizations in Haiti make maps with proprietary GIS programs,
> such as Esri's ArcGIS.  We want to share our OpenStreetMap, and we
> want to see more organizations open their data for us, too. Esri has a
> free plugin for ArcGIS to import from and export to OpenStreetMap:

Words of caution:

* We do not want to encourage use of proprietary software. So while it 
is certainly nice to have an ArcGIS plugin, it helps to make clear that 
using that is only the second choice after using our own free & open 
software, or if someone wants a "proper GIS", after using the free & 
open Quantum GIS, gvSIG, or other alternatives.

* "Exporting to OpenStreetMap", i.e. uploading existing data, is 
something that must definitely be reserved for expert OpenStreetMap 
users who know exactly what they are doing, who can write the necessary 
scripts to make sure data does not conflict with what's already there, 
and who know how to revert changesets if they should do anything wrong. 
Under no circumstances must we give the impression that anyone with some 
data to spare could simply "upload" that to OSM with a few keystrokes in 
the ArcGIS editor.

Bye
Frederik



More information about the Talk-ht mailing list