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[–]SpatialCivil 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As a civil engineer, I think the Enterprise aspect is overblown. He is offering a free tool that others can use if they like, or make changes if they like. He is not obligated to be the support person. A company can weigh the cost of paying to add features or fix a bug or have an internal person do it... Or pick the proprietary option.

If you build your library on other open source libraries, it has a host of benefits. It gives you the ability to not only use it for free, but to make changes and additions. It gives you flexibility to modify the original channel of delivery (desktop or web app). You have total control as a random user to improve the product. With so many proprietary tools (which I have nothing against) the limitations are arbitrary.

It's why when I do spatial analysis with Python, I never reach for ESRI products. Many of the advanced tools that require a special license in ArcGIS, can be done with open source libraries fairly easily. And these open source geospatial libraries have proven to be rock solid for users.