List of free/open source web mapping softwares available on the internet:
MapServer
Website: www.mapserver.org
Lincense: MIT License
Current release: MapServer 5.6.1 (Jan 8, 2010)
MapServer is a platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web. Originally developed in the mid-1990’s at the University of Minnesota, MapServer is released under an MIT-style license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).
MapServer is now a project of OSGeo, and is maintained by a growing number of developers (nearing 20) from around the world. It is supported by a diverse group of organizations that fund enhancements and maintenance, and administered within OSGeo by the MapServer Project Steering Committee made up of developers and other contributors.
GeoServer
Website: geoserver.org
License: GNU GPL
Current relaase: GeoServer 2.0.1 (Jan 10, 2010)
GeoServer is an open source software server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards.
GeoServer is the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, as well as a high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS). GeoServer forms a core component of the Geospatial Web.
MapGuide Open Source
Website: mapguide.osgeo.org
License: GNU LGPL
Current release: MapGuide 2.1.0 (Sept 21, 2009)
MapGuide Open Source is a web-based platform that enables users to develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure.
MapGuide includes an XML database for managing content, and supports most popular geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. MapGuide can be deployed on Linux or Windows, supports Apache and IIS web servers, and offers extensive PHP, .NET, Java, and JavaScript APIs for application development.
Mapnik
Website: mapnik.org
License: GNU LGPL
Current release: Mapnik 0.7.0 (Jan 19, 2010)
Mapnik is a Free Toolkit for developing mapping applications. It’s written in C++ and there are Python bindings to facilitate fast-paced agile development. It can comfortably be used for both desktop and web development, which was something I wanted from the beginning.
Mapnik is about making beautiful maps. It uses the AGG library and offers world class anti-aliasing rendering with subpixel accuracy for geographic data. It is written from scratch in modern C++ and doesn’t suffer from design decisions made a decade ago. When it comes to handling common software tasks such as memory management, filesystem access, regular expressions, parsing and so on, Mapnik doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but utilizes best of breed industry standard libraries from boost.org
PMapper
Website: www.pmapper.net
License: GNU GPL
Current release: Pmapper 4.0.0 (Dec 19, 2009)
PMapper is a framework intended to offer broad functionality and multiple configurations in order to facilitate the setup of a MapServer application based on PHP/MapScript.
MapBender
Website: www.mapbender.org
License: GNU GPL
Current release: MapBender 2.6 (Sept 22, 2009)
Mapbender is the software and portal site for geodata management of OGC OWS architectures. The software provides web technology for managing spatial data services implemented in PHP, JavaScript and XML . It provides a data model and interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC compliant map services. The Mapbender framework furthermore provides authentication and authorization services, OWS proxy functionality, management interfaces for user, group and service administration in WebGIS projects.
CartoWeb
Website: www.cartoweb.org
License: GNU GPL
Current release: Cartoweb 3.5.0 (Sept 4, 2008)
CartoWeb is a comprehensive and ready-to-use Web-GIS (Geographical Information System) as well as a convenient framework for building advanced and customized applications.
Developed by Camptocamp SA, it is based on the MapServer engine and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Written using innovative language PHP5, CartoWeb is highly modular and customizable thanks to its object-oriented architecture. It runs evenly on Windows or Unix-like platforms and shows its real power when associated to PostgreSQL/PostGIS.
Chameleon
Website: chameleon.maptools.org
License: Open Source
Current Version: Chameleon 2.6 rc1
Chameleon is a distributed, highly configurable, environment for developing Web Mapping applications. It is built on MapServer as the core mapping engine and works with all MapServer supported data formats through a regular MAP file. It also works well with OpenGIS Consortium standards for Web Mapping Services (WMS) and WMT Viewer Contexts through MapServer’s support for these standards.
Chameleon incorporates the ability to quickly set up new applications from a common pool of widgets that can be placed in an HTML template file. These widgets provide a fixed piece of functionality, but the representation of the widget is usually highly configurable.
OpenLayers
Website: www.openlayers.org
License: BSD Style
Current release: OpenLayers 2.8 (June 22, 2009)
OpenLayers is a pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a (still-developing) JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth APIs, with one important difference — OpenLayers is Free Software, developed for and by the Open Source software community.
Furthermore, OpenLayers implements industry-standard methods for geographic data access, such as the OpenGIS Consortium’s Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) protocols. Under the hood, OpenLayers is written in object-oriented JavaScript, using components from Prototype.js and the Rico library. The OpenLayers code base already has hundreds of unit tests, via the Test.AnotherWay framework.
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