Evaluation of Desktop Free/open Source Gis Software Based on Functional and Non-functional Capabilities

Original scientific paper In recent years information technology has grown very rapidly. In the context of GIS, Free/Open source concept and also three-dimensional implementation have had more development too. The usage of these types of software is increasingly growing because of reasons such as security, open standards, vendor independence. In this regard, one of the most significant problems that free/open source software encounters is that these types of software do not have any specific supporter. Due to this reason the assessment and evaluation of this category of software is performed by the academic communities. On the other hand, the high rate of evolution of technology has facilitated implementation of third party software and use of three dimensions of spatial information in different processes especially in the field of GIS. Consequently, this study attempts to evaluate free/open source GIS software in the field of three dimensional applications. Therefore, after classification of Desktop free/open source GIS software, some of the selected software is evaluated based on their functional and non-functional capabilities in the context of three dimensional applications. The results of functional evaluation show that GRASS as a free/open source software competes with powerful proprietary software. Moreover, the results of non-functional evaluation show that with regard to different tests that have been done, GRASS, SAGA and ILWIS present acceptable results.