NDI, bye bye?
NDI, or Nautical Data International, just announced that it’s selling its exclusive right to produce and license digital versions of Canadian charts back to the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), effective on March 30. It sounds like that’s the end of a long and unpleasant affair I’ve discussed before, but who knows for sure? If you read the Q&A’s, you’ll find that NDI plans to stay in business, and to continue its suits against C-Map and Navionics. I haven’t followed this dispute closely, but have noticed that both those companies are now offering very reasonably priced Canadian charts, especially when compared to NDI’s PC charts. In fact, I know boats that have gone from PC to plotter mainly because of that price difference. Here’s hoping that CHS will make Canadian rasters and ENCs more affordable and easier to use.
That can only be great news for us in the Great White North! I’ve checked back with the NDI website several times over the last year or so. Every time I’m in complete disbelief at the prices. Especially when I can go download ENCs for the entire US with a single click.
Come on Canada…do the right thing! It’s time to make up for that horrendous real with NDI and start giving away (or at least at a reasonable cost) what our tax dollars paid for in the first place.
richard.
Agree its time for each countries IHO to release charts at no cost to mariners as it is already payed for with tax dollars. Good open standards are the way to go with marine cartography. Easy to update, usable in dozens of application, and no vendor lock. Think twice before you plunk your hard earned dollars on someones proprietary charts as you may be obsoleted sooner than later.
It would be good for GPSnavX too as I and I’m sure many others would be heading to your web site to buy a copy of MacENC! I would have had it already if it weren’t for the price of the CDN charts. BTW, thanks for leading the way for us long term mac-heads! I’ve got the mac mini installed in my boat running GPSnavX and loving it!
Ever thought about writing a Salling Clicker script for it? That would be awesome. I run Salling clicker on board to control iTunes, etc. from the helm.