Based on some arms-length interactions with the USGS, my impression is that they use ESRI stuff for basically everything spatial. Ditto for my city I think. The

Based on some arms-length interactions with the USGS, my impression is that they use ESRI stuff for basically everything spatial. Ditto for my city I think. The extent of the ESRI monopoly/entrenchment in government is maddening to me considering the licensing costs, the high quality of the open-source alternatives, and the fact that I'm footing the bill. When I was taking some GIS classes at a public university I wondered out loud if the classes would be about GIS or about "using ESRI products". When I inquired about having students learn to do the work with QGIS there was some hemming and hawing and "well we really don't know much about open source tools" and I got handed an install image of ArcGIS. I feel like I paid about 1/2 of my tuition to learn GIS fundamentals and the other 1/2 to pay for training on ESRI products.