The Global Software Institute (GSI) has announced that, effective immediately, OpenDragon is available for free download by users anywhere in the world. OpenDragon offers a full suite of image analysis and raster GIS capabilities including image enhancement, supervised and unsupervised classification, geometric correction, measurement and statistics, vector capture and display, slope, aspect and buffer calculations and multi-criterion decision making. OpenDragon also includes the OpenDragon Toolkit, which allows users who can program in C to extend the software functionality.

GSI will also make the source code for OpenDragon available for non-commercial use under an Open Source license during the next six to nine months.

"Schools, colleges and universities need robust, high quality software for geoinformatics teaching and research," said Dr. Sally E. Goldin, President of GSI. "Commercial software is too expensive, especially for lesser developed countries, while 'home grown' software is frequently buggy or incomplete. OpenDragon fills the gap by providing a wide range of core geoinformatics functions in an integrated, easy-to-use package. The Toolkit is especially useful for faculty and graduate students who need to develop and evaluate their own algorithms."

OpenDragon is a free offshoot of the commercial Dragon/ips(r) system from Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Inc. OpenDragon is fully internationalized. The current system provides Thai, Czech, French, Russian, Bahasa Indonesian and Brazilian Portuguese interfaces. GSI will gladly cooperate with any organization wishing to translate the software into other languages.

Users interested in downloading OpenDragon should visit http://www.open-dragon.org for details.

The Global Software Institute was founded to apply computer technology to global needs. For more information on GSI visit http://www.global-soft.org.

For information on the more powerful commercial version of Dragon, visit http://www.dragon-ips.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact Sally Goldin, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it