uDig - Open Source GIS

There are several open source GIS-tools available on the web and one of them is uDig, a Java-based desktop application providing plenty of functionality for common GIS-user, and, in addition, Eclipse based SDK for experienced users (I do not belong to this latter group, so no more words on that...). uDig has a great support vor variuous file formats, including the more or less standard ESRI shapefile plus plenty of other formats, covering of course both raster and vector-based files. But what is really nice of this application is the built-in support for WMS-services and database solutions such as ArcSDE. The database for built-in coordinate-systems is also very extensive and should cover the needs of most of the users. Creating features in uDig is straightforward and works well, but what is still lacking is the availability of spatial analysis tools. However, several projects aiming for developing these tools on top of the uDig framework are already out there (check for example this) and presumably more will follow in course of time as the user and developer community grows. Nevertheless, uDig, in it's present functionality, is already a solid GIS-tool which fulfills the needs of a  basic GIS user. As based on Java, uDig works on most platforms.