Digging Into The Open Source Geospatial Software And OpenGeo Suite 3.0

Summary: On October 2, OpenGeo released a major upgrade to the OpenGeo suite. The company expects users will be excited about enhancements in production and processing and a closer feature match to Esri’s ArcGIS Server. Rolando Peñate, OpenGeo’s product manager, answered our questions about open source geospatial software and the new release.

Directions Magazine (DM): If all of this software is open source and free, why should I pay OpenGeo for it?

Rolando Peñate (RP): Because there’s more to a software product than the license of the source code. While closed source software may have explicit license costs, all software (including open source) has maintenance, operating and other related costs.  OpenGeo’s mission is to lower those costs while continually enhancing the functionality of open source, and our customers value that highly. We expand on this idea in our white paper, "The Value of the OpenGeo Suite."