Stack Overflow & OSGeo

date:

2010-05-19 21:46

author:

admin

category:

general, programming

tags:

opensource, osgeo, stackoverflow

slug:

stack-overflow-osgeo

status:

published

Stack Overflow, as most developers will already know, is a question and answer site for programmers. It’s perfect for mainstream development questions in any programming language, and has also become the support site of choice for some newer programming communities such as Android developers. image

It can also be used as a barometer to see which current open source GIS projects have gained traction in the mainstream programming world. I took the full list of OSGeo projects from http://www.osgeo.org/ and ran queries on the site to see how many questions there were for each project. The results are as follows (as of May 2010):

Project

Type

No. of Questions

Link to Questions

deegree

web mapping

0 results

geomajas

web mapping

1 result

geomajas

GeoServer _

web mapping

13 results

geoserver

Mapbender

web mapping

0 results

MapBuilder

web mapping

0 results

MapFish

web mapping

1 result

mapfish

MapGuide

web mapping

1 result

mapguide

MapServer

web mapping

17 results

mapserver & `umn-mapserver <ht tp://stackoverflow .com/questions/tag ged/umn-mapserver> `__

OpenLayers

web mapping

56 results

openlayers

GRASS GIS

desktop

0 results

OSSIM <http://www .osgeo.org/ossim> __

desktop

0 results

Quantum GIS

desktop

0 results

gvSIG <http://www .osgeo.org/gvsig> __

desktop

0 results

FDO

library

0 results

GDAL/OGR

library

14 results

`gdal <http://stac koverflow.com/ques tions/tagged/gdal> `__

GEOS

library

2 results

`geos <http://stac koverflow.com/ques tions/tagged/geos> `__

GeoTools

library

7 results

geotools

`MetaCRS <http://m etacrs.osgeo.org/> `__

library

0 results

PostGIS _

library

54 results

postgis

GeoNetwork

metadata catalog

0 results

A couple of disclaimers ?” I added the MapFish tag, and tagged a few of the GeoTools questions myself.

Its clear that OpenLayers and PostGIS are way out in front in terms of questions asked, and it may not be too much of a leap to suggest these projects are the most widely used GIS projects outside of the GIS world.

image

A JavaScript error ironically thrown by OpenLayers

Neither of these projects however match the huge numbers of questions about neogeographer’s tools of choice ?” Google Maps at 1,369 questions. Poor old Bing Maps (perhaps partly due to being renamed from Live Maps) only gets 71 questions.

Stack Overflow makes use of tags and a REST API so the full collection of questions related to OSGeo projects can be seen using the `following URL <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/geomajas%20or%20geoserver%20or%20mapfish%20or%20mapguide%20or%20mapserver%20or%20openlayers%20or%20gdal%20or%20geos%20or%20geotools%20or%20postgis%20or%20osgeo>`__.

While it looks very unlikely that Stack Overflow will ever replace the OSGeo mailing lists as the first choice for debate and support, it would be good if a few of the FAQ got asked on Stack Overflow to help new users of these projects who aren’t aware of the mailing lists, or the Nabble interface to search them. It would also spread knowledge that these projects exist to mainstream developers and could help some projects gain traction.

You can also upvote (or downvote) my answers too, as there are so few GIS developers using the site that no one can assess the whether my answers are valid or nonsense..

orphan:

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