.. only:: html

   |updatedisclaimer|

.. _`label_forward`:

*********
Foreword
*********

Welcome to the wonderful world of Geographical Information Systems (GIS)!

QGIS is an Open Source Geographic Information System. The project was born
in May of 2002 and was established as a project on SourceForge in June of
the same year. We've worked hard to make GIS software (which is
traditionally expensive proprietary software) a viable prospect for anyone
with basic access to a personal computer. QGIS currently runs on most Unix
platforms, Windows, and macOS. QGIS is developed using the Qt toolkit
(https://www.qt.io) and C++.  This means that QGIS feels snappy and has a
pleasing, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI).

QGIS aims to be a user-friendly GIS, providing common functions and
features.  The initial goal of the project was to provide a GIS data
viewer. QGIS has reached the point in its evolution where it is being used
by many for their daily GIS data-viewing needs. QGIS supports a number of
raster and vector data formats, with new format support easily added using
the plugin architecture.

QGIS is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Developing
QGIS under this license means that you can inspect and modify the source
code, and guarantees that you, our happy user, will always have access to a
GIS program that is free of cost and can be freely modified. You should
have received a full copy of the license with your copy of QGIS, and you
also can find it in Appendix :ref:`gpl_appendix`.

.. index:: documentation

.. tip::
        **Up-to-date Documentation**

        The latest version of this document can always be found in the
        documentation area of the QGIS website at
        http://www.qgis.org/en/docs/.