Comment CJMTK - ESRI lock-in, mandated by Congress? (Score 2) 35
OK, this is hearsay, but I remember being told maybe 15 years ago that Congress placed language in the DoD budget mandating the use of a Commercial Mapping Toolkit, with language such that only ESRI's product would qualify. What I know is the CJMTK (Commercial Joint Mapping ToolKit) is an ESRI proprietary interface that is mandated for use in DoD systems.
Since then, it's been difficult to provide alternatives, particularly at the library/component level. Google Earth has gotten some traction, but not as an API but rather as a rendering engine.