Anita Graser, Tim Sutton, and Marco Bernasocchi (all members of the QGIS Project Steering Committee) have published the canonical paper1 on the QGIS project: “The QGIS project: Spatial without compromise”2. The paper is “open access” at ScienceDirect. From the introduction:
QGIS is available across a wide range of platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS, as well as mobile applications for Android and iOS. Efforts are also under way to develop a browser-based version using web assembly. The software has been translated into over 100 languages, with 20 translations covering more than 75% of the application’s functionality.
The paper positions the QGIS project in the GIS “ecosystem” and describes the evolution of the project through the following phases (authors’ words, not mine):
- Origins and early development (2002–2007)
- Expansion of capabilities and infrastructure (2008–2012)
- The QGIS.ORG association and organizational maturity (2013–2017)
- Transition to QGIS 3 and the path forward (2018–present)
It details the project’s (Switzerland-based) organization, the software release management process, the infrastructure management, the project budget (approximately, EUR 400,000 in 2024; but beware: this sum does not equate to the total amount invested in QGIS), (very high-level) features, broad typical use-cases, a brief overview over the plug-in collection, and usage numbers, among others.
I like3 that the paper concludes with 5 key challenges to the QGIS project and potential solutions.
Footnotes
A canonical paper is a foundational academic publication that is intended to serve as the standard reference for a topic, in this case the QGIS project.↩︎
The title refers to the, I think relatively new (?), tag line of the project.↩︎
Minor dislike, but it doesn’t detract too much from the rest: The paper mentions the cliché that, allegedly, “80% of all data contains a geograpical component” (at least not: “… is spatial.”). See here for data on this point (in German).↩︎