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Where are gvSIG users?

These days a webinar on gvSIG will be offered to learn more about the project. Although a strong objective of this is the Portuguese-speaking market as it is done within the framework of the MundoGEO event, its scope will go further, so we take the opportunity to analyze some of the figures that I have assimilated in my experience.

GvSIG has become the most widespread Geographic Information System in the Spanish-speaking context and possibly the project with a more aggressive internationalization strategy that seeks sustainability in the community rather than in sponsorship. Despite being a clearly prioritized tool as desktop GIS, 100,000 downloads of the same version constitute an interesting number of users from 90 countries and with translations into 25 languages. Its greatest potential is in its approach as a thin client of Spatial Data Infrastructures (IDEs) in which it can complement projects that take advantage of the potential of other Open Source tools. 

I have talked about this on several occasions, so I suggest the GvSIG content index, now let's check where those users are, using for this almost 2,400 queries that I have received in Geofumadas in the last months, where the word gvSIG is included as a keyword.

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The graph shows the countries from which the inquiries have come. For some reason it is difficult for me to include Spain for reasons of character encoding, because do not think that it is so easy to put a graphic like this in a blog entry, with HTML5; hovering the mouse displays the Ratio explained later.

At first glance you can see how it has spread gvSIG Latin America and Spain, but see how they also get consultations from European countries and other continents up to where projects will have driven gvSIG although they do not speak Spanish there is the target Geofumadas.

 

In the consciousness of those who are gvSIG

Now let's see this other graph, where you can see the positioning that gvSIG has achieved. To do this I have considered the number of searches but I have created a comparison ratio for every million internet users that each country has (not inhabitants). Red is the ratio, blue is the number of searches within the sample of 2,400 queries.

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Interesting to Spain are Uruguay, Paraguay, Honduras and Bolivia.

Then a second block where are El Salvador, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Venezuela.

And then Panama, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Argentina.

Everyone can make their conclusions, but the truth is that the best positioning occurs in countries with limited economic resources, although the little access to the Internet causes a noise that causes the ratio to increase. This is usually more than obvious, but it is also encouraging since these are the countries where they occur higher piracy rates. Where also the presence of the proprietary GIS has fewer large companies; As we see Peru, Argentina and Chile, despite having active communities of gvSIG users, they have companies that work very hard to pressure projects to implement non-open source platforms, mainly Esri.

 

Where there are more gvSIG users

And finally let's look at this graph. It is about where the gvSIG users are by country, using a percentage relationship of the same number of visits that used gvSIG as a keyword.

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Half of users are in Spain, where although it is not the only free tool, positioning in companies offering training, universities and user communities is worthy of a particular review. 

Then there is an 25% that is occupied by Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela; Apart from being countries with many millions of users on the Internet, the communities of gvSIG users have also contributed to the Foundation, especially Venezuela and Argentina.

Then Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay that together add another 10%.

It is clear that this is an analysis of Hispanic users, since 98% of Geofumadas traffic is Spanish-speaking. Sure, other sites fill the Italian, French and other European countries traffic that is also growing due to the proximity and the user communities. As the tools spread and are appropriated by strong communities and institutions, the Foundation will have a break from common concerns that plague us all, such as: 

To what extent is it possible for a crisis in Europe to affect the source of funding that still feeds the project?

Of course, the best defender of gvSIG must be the users who bet on freedom based on fair and sustainable competitiveness. Nor should we forget the quota of pride that we must have (despite the individual disagreements that we may have), the internationalization of a tool that was born from our Hispanic context should bring us satisfaction.

Gvsig

To learn more about the gvSIG Project, you can subscribe to the Webinar that will be on Tuesday 22 de Mayo

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/732386538

Golgi Alvarez

Writer, researcher, specialist in Land Management Models. He has participated in the conceptualization and implementation of models such as: National Property Administration System SINAP in Honduras, Management Model of Joint Municipalities in Honduras, Integrated Cadastre-Registry Management Model in Nicaragua, Territory Administration System SAT in Colombia . Editor of the Geofumadas knowledge blog since 2007 and creator of the AulaGEO Academy that includes more than 100 courses on GIS - CAD - BIM - Digital Twins topics.

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2 Comments

  1. I would specify in the news that will be the Spanish-speaking users. gvSIG also has users of other languages, for example Italian, that surely will not enter pages in Spanish.

    Otherwise very good job

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