EVALUATION OF FREE/OPEN SOURCE WEBGIS SOFTWARE BASED ON OSMM MODEL

The trend of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) development, especially in the field of Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), has grown rapidly in recent years. Such progress has provided FOSS solutions to different GIS problems. Obviously, the on-going awareness of FOSS tools in GIS community helps with further expansion of these tools to new applications and solving other problems. This study explores WebGIS FOSS tools especially UMN MapServer and MapGuide OS and their capabilities. It uses Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM) for a comprehensive evaluation of these software’s from different aspects including the product itself, technical support, documentation, integration with other products, and professional services with a unique weighting scheme. Therefore, current research provides a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of different open source WebGIS tools in the context of GIS functionality on the Web. The research shows that UMN MapServer, as the leading complete open source WebGIS software, can be seen as a complete product competing with similar commercial products. Also, open source community proves that in the field of WebGIS this software can support wide range of applications using its server-side and client-side tools