TECHNICAL GUIDELINES ON DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF OPEN-SOURCE TOOLS

The use of Open-source software has gained a lot of attention in the world and is slowly replacing the use of proprietary software (Bhatta, 2009; Pieper, 2008). There has been an advancement in the development of open-source software. Due to the development of spatial extensions, PostgreSQL and MySQL database solutions have become more capable of handling cadastral datasets. For a long time, open-source software was unable to compare with proprietary software in vector editing, a thing that has seen significant development in the recent past. The existing

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open-source products had majorly focused on raster other than vector editing. Open-source software products are normally not known to normal GIS users but are well known among developers because they are not advertised as proprietary software. In countries that are still developing their land administration systems, the costs associated with licensing and maintaining proprietary software are not sustainable. In addition, open-source software e.g., PostgreSQL and MySQL are easier and faster to install and take up less hard drive space as compared to Oracle.