Hi all.
Even though these "web statistics" are always to be taken with caution:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass
gis&cmpt=q
(thanks Maxim for pointing it out)
I think they tell us several interesting things, particularly from the
point of view of users (those most likely to use a search engine for the
sw they are using/trying to use):
- qgis is on the rise, grass is decreasing. I do not think this means
there is competition between the two, but rather that people use the two
programs as a toolset, doing what is best done with each of them. It
seems that qgis is replacing grass for simpler (desktop) tasks, and
grass is mainly used for more complex analyses
- for both programs, the association between the two terms (qgis+grass)
is among the top ranking search items; this confirms the above hypothesis
- together, they are much more popular that their main alternative, gvSIG:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass
gis%2Cgvsig&cmpt=q .
Unfortunately, it seems that both qgis and grass devs are mainly
concentrated on their core sw, with limited attention to the interaction
between the two (eg the qgis-plugin-grass does not have a dedicated dev,
and in grass a lot of dev effort has been put to implement a new UI,
replicating many functionalities already usable in qgis (also for grass
layers).
I would therefore respectfully suggest devs, form the users perspective,
to consider concentrating on the best of each world, reducing the
duplication of efforts, and improving the (already good) interaction
between the two programs.
On the other hand, I would suggest users to invest some resources to go
in the same direction. As a part of this, I'm investing some money (and
I plan to do more in the future) to fix long standing bugs in qgis,
personally mainly focusing on the qgis-plugin-grass:
http://www.qgis.org/wiki/index.php/Bugs
All the best.
--
Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc
+1
I understand the importance and the need to give all the best to the
core dev, as there are many parts that need to be
mantained/updated/refactored/built (ie the raster core code in
qgis...), but I support a boost to the 'joints' of the systems
integration. as I think that their integration is a leading factor for
their diffusion and presence in the end-user community.
I'm happy to see the proposal from Paolo about a found raising for
qgis-grass-plugin, and I hope I will be able to contribute (also
economically).
The other important (foundamental, in my opinion) issue is the Windows
support. I've tried to give a help for the Osgeo4w stack some time
ago, but I've wasted all my time in trying to solve Windows Vista's
problems... without very good results!
have a nice day,
giovanni
2009/5/4 Nikos Alexandris <nikos.alexandris@felis.uni-freiburg.de>:
On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 08:49 +0200, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
---%<---I would therefore respectfully suggest devs, form the users perspective,
to consider concentrating on the best of each world, reducing the
duplication of efforts, and improving the (already good) interaction
between the two programs.---%<---
+1 to that from an end-user like me.
I would like also to mention OpenEV. It is the fastest geodata viewer
[period]. I don't know the coding background and the differences for
among QGIS, GRASS and OpenEV, but why not use it, create interaction
with it _or_ use parts of its code _or_ just look at some of its
attractive features?Kindest regards, Nikos
_______________________________________________
Qgis-user mailing list
Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
Hi Paolo,
thanks for the stats, but I believe that the comparison is quite inappropriate.
My 2 cents...
The graph grass vs. qgis (http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass&cmpt=q)
shows that grass is much more searched then qgis, but the grass searched from people is related to the vegetation mainly 
If you compare "grass gis" vs qgis
(http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass%20gis&cmpt=q)
you can see the trend with decreasing searches for grass and rising for qgis, but still it has limitations. becouse is the composition of two word and you can imagine how many words can be combined to search for G.R.A.S.S.
Maybe web site hits statistics are more relevant? or number of download?
Paolo Cavallini wrote:
Hi all.
Even though these "web statistics" are always to be taken with caution:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass
gis&cmpt=q
(thanks Maxim for pointing it out)
I think they tell us several interesting things, particularly from the
point of view of users (those most likely to use a search engine for the
sw they are using/trying to use):
- qgis is on the rise, grass is decreasing. I do not think this means
there is competition between the two, but rather that people use the two
programs as a toolset, doing what is best done with each of them. It
seems that qgis is replacing grass for simpler (desktop) tasks, and
grass is mainly used for more complex analyses
- for both programs, the association between the two terms (qgis+grass)
is among the top ranking search items; this confirms the above hypothesis
- together, they are much more popular that their main alternative, gvSIG:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/overviewReport?cat=&q=qgis&geo=&date=&gprop=&clp=&cmpt=q#q=qgis%2Cgrass
gis%2Cgvsig&cmpt=q .
Unfortunately, it seems that both qgis and grass devs are mainly
concentrated on their core sw, with limited attention to the interaction
between the two (eg the qgis-plugin-grass does not have a dedicated dev,
and in grass a lot of dev effort has been put to implement a new UI,
replicating many functionalities already usable in qgis (also for grass
layers).
I would therefore respectfully suggest devs, form the users perspective,
to consider concentrating on the best of each world, reducing the
duplication of efforts, and improving the (already good) interaction
between the two programs.
On the other hand, I would suggest users to invest some resources to go
in the same direction. As a part of this, I'm investing some money (and
I plan to do more in the future) to fix long standing bugs in qgis,
personally mainly focusing on the qgis-plugin-grass:
http://www.qgis.org/wiki/index.php/Bugs
All the best.
--
Dr. Eng. Massimiliano Cannata
Responsabile Area Geomatica
Istituto Scienze della Terra
Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana
Via Trevano, c.p. 72
CH-6952 Canobbio-Lugano
Tel: +41 (0)58 666 62 14
Fax +41 (0)58 666 62 09
Massimiliano Cannata ha scritto:
thanks for the stats, but I believe that the comparison is quite
inappropriate.
I'm aware of this, and I pointed it out. Nevertheless, the *trends* are
interesting, and I think they are well explained by my hypotheses.
All the best.
--
Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Massimiliano Cannata
<massimiliano.cannata@supsi.ch> wrote:
...
Maybe web site hits statistics are more relevant? or number of download?
Find them here (That's *real* data):
http://grass.osgeo.org/logs-bin/awstats.pl?config=grass.osgeo.org
Not sure if it exists for QGIS, too.
Markus