16.5 FOSS

One of the elements of the term introduced in Chapter 1 was that geographic methods should have a positive impact. Of course, how to define and measure ‘positive’ is a subjective, philosophical question, beyond the scope of this book. Regardless of your worldview, consideration of the impacts of geocomputational work is a useful exercise: the potential for positive impacts can provide a powerful motivation for future learning and, conversely, new methods can open-up many possible fields of application. These considerations lead to the conclusion that geocomputation is part of a wider ‘open source approach’.

Reproducibility

• encourages creativity by shifting the focus away from the basics (which are readily available through shared code) and towards applications;
• discourages people from ‘reinventing the wheel’: there is no need to re-do what others have done if their methods can be used by others; and
• makes research more conducive to real world applications, by enabling anyone in any sector to apply your methods in new areas.

The open source approach is more than a technical entity. It is a community composed of people interacting daily with shared aims: to produce high performance tools, free from commercial or legal restrictions, that are accessible for anyone to use. The open source approach to working with geographic data has advantages that transcend the technicalities of how the software works, encouraging learning, collaboration and an efficient division of labor.

It is instructive to watch the incessant development activity happen in public fora such as GitHub, but it is even more rewarding to become an active participant. This is one of the greatest features of the open source approach: it encourages people to get involved.