Boundless Geospatial Opportunities

A few weeks ago in GGS 692: Web-based GIS we were assigned a set of exercises writing spatial SQL queries on a spatially enabled database. The reading material for the lesson consists mainly sections from an Introduction to PostGIS tutorial produced by a company named Boundless.

It wasn't until I began reading the tutorial that I realized just how much of the curriculum of our course comes directly from the Boundless materials.  By providing high quality, classroom ready learning materials, Boundless has changed the curriculum in the GIS program GMU from one using proprietary software to one built on free software tools.

I only wish other projects in the free software movement could take this valuable lesson from Boundless and find a way to get their tools into classrooms. If we want to change the world, this is an important part of how we have to do it!