zigGIS 3.0 To Be Open-Source

Update: zigGIS has been discontinued.

Abe officially announced today that the next major release of zigGIS, version 3.0, will return to open-source. This announcement was followed up with a message on the zigGIS Google Group. A snippet of that message is here:

We have some exciting news. The next version of zigGIS will officially return to being truly open source. That means zigGIS 3.0 will be free to download and use.

Of course this doesn’t mean zigGIS 3.0 will be free to develop. Though zigGIS is held near and dear to the hearts of the Obtuse Software team it cannot be developed on love alone. So we we’ll be seeking funding in ways alternative to selling licenses. We’ll follow a more traditional open source model of accepting personal donations and corporate sponsorships and selling support contracts.

Version 2.x will continue to be supported on the forums here and licenses sold at obtusesoft.com. However, all funds will be applied directly to the development of 3.0.

I’m glad that zigGIS is returning to its open-source roots. Since the release of 2.0, the zigGIS user community has grown a lot and there has been interest from other developers in extending it in new ways. I am excited by the prospect of the involvement of a wider community of users and developers in its advancement.