There are many reasons why people demand to learn about GIS and several different 
types of careers and professional activities involving GIS; spatial data is among 
all our daily life and most business services. This diversity of demands leads to a 
broad range of educational needs that makes it difficult to design unique GIS 
curricula to meet the needs of all these people. Also, there are several 
educational programs for professionals including: formal courses, introductory 
seminars, workshops and distance learning. GIS education has many different 
approaches to suit different levels of learners, for disparate student populations 
and for various objectives.
GIS Education incorporates scientific concepts, SW and HW practicing, experiments, 
research and development applications. This paper examines the role of open-source 
GIS SW in two main different approaches; GIS Education and GIS Training. The latter 
is measured by what you can do when you've completed it. Training improves 
performance on GIS tools (SW), such learning is primarily passive. Education, on 
the other hand, seeks to have the student learn GIS concepts and science and 
acquire analytical skills and to understand why actions are taken. However, all 
education must include training to ensure the concept understanding, such learning 
is an interactive process.
Open source GIS (Free GIS) can be quite adequate in the two approaches, as its 
bottom-up nature suits the training needs as a requirement of the society. However, 
the education approach which will only be available to few specialists who will 
also prefer open source GIS (Free GIS) due to the ease of obtaining and customizing 
its tools which facilitate the research activities and the professional development.
This paper will also present the Information Technology Institute experience with 
open source GIS in post-graduates studies through a 9 month diploma, preparing its 
graduates to be a full professional GIS specialists fit for the local and 
international markets and providing the awareness of GIS development in Egypt 
taking a Open source GIS / Free GIS approach.