Comment by n8cpdx

Comment by n8cpdx 9 hours ago

LibreOffice vs Office 365/Google Drive is probably the more relevant comparison.

I won’t comment on market share, but even if theoretically QGIS totally displaced ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap/ArcGIS on the desktop, the arena of competition has shifted to ArcGIS Online and its competitors. And once you’re in ArcGIS Online, Pro becomes the convenient choice for desktop editing.

LibreOffice could be miles better than Office on desktop, but the competition is lost because Office on desktop is just an accessory for Office 365 (which competes with Google Docs/Drive).

Disclosure: I work at Esri.

dvdkon 6 hours ago

I don't think the comparison is quite apt, because while LibreOffice has no support for collaborative workflows (short of error-prone shared drives), QGIS can connect to quite a few geospatial databases, with third parties offering plugins for their own cloud platforms.

It would be nice to have better support for browser-based sharing and editing, but the desktop-based parts are there already.

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n8cpdx 5 hours ago

That’s an important point. The collaboration model is more complex in GIS because it’s not just documents (maps and map projects) but the underlying data is coming from databases that are independently editable.
The comparison still works in some ways though, because ArcGIS is selling you both the software (ArcGIS Pro, Map Viewer, Field Maps, etc) and the backing services (hosted feature services, basemaps, locators, etc), similar to how Office is selling you data hosting, sharing, and mobile + web app integration.
You can accomplish the same things with QGIS, GeoServer, QField, etc, but then you’re in the position of building a GIS from parts. Whereas with ArcGIS, setting up a new map and database (feature service) for data collection is a point-click workflow.
Of course you pay a premium for that level of integration.

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duncanfwalker 8 hours ago

That's an insightful nuance. I've seen you just create divisions in organisations because while it is a really fully featured desktop application, it implies a way of working that doesn't play well with the cloud, which creates barriers between experimenting and production.

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