Imagine spending 30 years legally responsible for a habitat boundary that was drawn on the wrong piece of land. And I don't mean wrong by a field or two. We're talking wrong because the data underlying the map was never accurate to begin with. It's things like this that make me sit bolt upright at 3 am, sweating like plums wrapped in a polythene bag.

Open-source technology is quietly running the world. It's part of the critical infrastructure and hardware that are vital to many of our jobs and most people don’t realise it. Many of my clients use QGIS (mostly as I train people how to use it) and they’re drawn to it because it’s “free” ー not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s accessible and lets you road-test it for nothing before you embed it in your work, so why wouldn’t you?