Community

Esri sponsors and participates in several open source geospatial events and organizations. This gives us the opportunity to communicate with the GIS and open source technologists to contribute our knowledge and experiences and to obtain feedback from open source developers and users. Our goal is to ensure that feedback from these discussions is reflected in future Esri products and business direction, with the intention of continuing to help our customers.

Organizations

Esri was a founding member of the oversight company for the 52°North open initiative. 52°North develops open source software for spatial data infrastructures (SDI), with a current focus on sensor Web enablement, security, and digital rights management. The emphasis is on research and development in these new areas. Products will be available using two licensing models: GNU general public license (GPL) and a commercial use license.

Esri is a member of the OpenAjax Alliance, with allows access to documentation and participation in dialogues with the top companies contributing toward AJAX standards. In addition, Esri is afforded the ability to add content to the evolving standards for AJAX from a GIS perspective.