The History of Open Source GIS: An Interactive Infographic (Updated for 2023)

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology is a powerful way to understand our world. Thanks to the open source community, the public today has access to excellent analysis tools, and many of them are free!

makepath is a proud contributor to many open source spatial analysis projects. Through this piece, we want to honor and highlight the contributors that have made it possible for open source GIS and other open source geospatial endeavors to grow and flourish.

This is an interactive piece. You can click on each entry to see more details as well as some anecdotes from project creators we connected with. You can also search for entries using the search bar or filter using by clicking on the categories (Vector, Raster, Both or Other) listed right underneath the search bar.

This is an open source infographic. It has been updated to make it more user-friendly and we will continue to add new and interesting entries periodically. If you have ideas, contributions, or additional projects you would like to recommend, we have set up a GitHub page for this timeline.

You can also tweet us @makepathGIS or email us at contact@makepath.com.