Preface

Welcome to Mastering QGIS. The goal of this book is to help intermediate and advanced users of GIS develop a deep understanding of the capabilities of QGIS while building the technical skills that would facilitate in making the shift from a proprietary GIS software package to QGIS.

QGIS embodies the open source community's spirit. It seamlessly works with other free and open source geospatial software, such as SAGA, GDAL, GRASS, and fTools, and supports standards and formats that are published by myriad organizations. QGIS is about freedom in the geospatial world: freedom to choose your operating system, freedom from licensing fees, freedom to customize, freedom to look under the hood, and freedom to contribute to the development of QGIS. As you work through this book, we believe that you will be amazed at how much capability and freedom QGIS provides.

QGIS has rapidly risen from the initial version written by Gary Sherman in 2002 to become a globally used and developed volunteer-led project. In 2009, QGIS version 1.0 was released as an Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) project and continues to be rapidly adopted worldwide. The enduring support of the open source community has really delivered QGIS to a point where it is now a top-shelf product that should be in all GIS users' toolboxes, and we want this book to be your tour guide and reference as you learn, use, and contribute to QGIS.