In addition, noncommercial efforts in GIS data translation have been gaining momentum. Frank Warmerdam, an independent spatial data developer, has been creating an excellent suite of translator library routines that are free to the public. He authored the ShapeLib, a library of source code to convert ESRI Shapefile data, and he's recently released Sdts2MI, a tool that converts SDTS files directly into MapInfo TAB format. Warmerdam also has provided some of the critical routines beneath Safe Software's new SDTS translation module. But he points out that altruism isn't the whole story, because in the Internet environment, an independent consultant enjoys personal satisfaction, effective inexpensive advertising and a larger market for his services by releasing software that gets widely used and distributed.
Some people create translators simply for the challenge.
At this point, they appear to have largely succeeded in producing an Open Source library for MapInfo's TAB format. Perhaps in the end, we'll learn that data want to be free. Value is in the data's use, not in the data themselves. Proprietary formats will become open to the public, or their proponents will be left behind. More digital spatial data will become available at lower prices, and, finally, data prices will drop to zero.