Hello,

I haven't been following this discussion, BUT a friend bounced it over to  
me.  So, if I am not totally clued in - you know why.  :-)

Why not do what was done with ELM (a full screen free unix email Mail 
User Agent [MUA] (email reader program)) when its author decided that 
he could no longer work on it.  A "public trust" (don't know to what 
degree they rigged this up with legal work to back it up) that the 
system was handed over to.  Then "work groups" were setup and volunteered
for.  They selected a coordinator (could be more than one) to organize
a plan for CONTINUED development based on what the public community 
had indicated they wanted to see.  All of this is done in distributed
world of Internet.  They have a main FTP site for the archive. Etc Etc.

GRASS is already done much in the same way.  The difference being that
instead of a "public trust" holding rights to GRASS, CERL does.  There
are also other differences.  But my point is that ELM has thrived and
version 3.0 is now well under development.  Workgroups could be established
for various components of GRASS and mailing lists/newsgroups setup for
each individual group.  A coordinator of that group could be selected and
an agenda established with reasonable stepping stone goals to carry
GRASS along in a distributed development effort.  LINUX also is worked
on in this fashion.  

Again, I am not totally clued in here.  But, just because CERL may
lose funding for OGI, etc., by no means (as has been proven on Internet
time and time again) does GRASS have to fade away.  There is an 
incredible amount of GREAT STUFF here!  I can see that trying to get
a single site to take on the WHOLE project would be ominous!  :-)  
But spread around in smaller, more manageable chunks should be less
threatening.  

Just some thoughts.

Mark 

> 
> Given the last few notes about the funding status of GRASS, I believe
> the only remaining question is: where do we send the flowers?  Unless a
> package is growing, and people are actively feeding it with new ideas,
> methods and refining the old ones, it becomes senile and fades into
> oblivion.  Efforts to simply maintain it are nothing more than
> attaching IV's and a respirator---continuing the vital signs of
> something that will soon become brain-dead.
> 
> This is unfortunate because GRASS is one of the few, if not only,
> public domain GIS systems and thus provided a service for those lacking
> deep pockets.  By being open software, it also allow others to
> contribute procedures and methods more easily than allowed by
> proprietary systems and thus afforded a research environment for
> developing GIS tools.
> 
> I am sure that some readers will claim I am too hasty to bury GRASS
> and should wait until the body is cold.  But my conclusions on GRASS's
> status are meant to either shock those who do not see the significance
> of recent discussions or warn potential new users away from getting
> involved with a dying system.  A third alternative is to get some
> group interested in picking up where CERL has left off; but I
> do not feel that is likely.
> 
> Gerald (Jerry) I. Evenden   Internet: gie@charon.er.usgs.gov
> voice: (508)563-6766          Postal: P.O. Box 1027
>   fax: (508)457-2310                  N.Falmouth, MA 02556-1027
> 
> 



