[OSGeo Africa] Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] Celebrating 30 years of GRASS GIS!

[Gavin Fleming]

/Press release/

/29 July 2013/


    Today marks 30 years of GRASS GIS development

Today the Free Software community celebrates the *30th birthday of GRASS 
GIS*! GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a *free 
and open source* Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used 
for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics 
and map production, spatial modeling, and 3D visualization. GRASS GIS is 
currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as 
well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting 
companies. GRASS GIS can be used either as a *stand-alone application* 
or as *backend* for other software packages such as QGIS and R 
geostatistics. It is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial 
Foundation (OSGeo <http://www.osgeo.org/>) and can be freely downloaded 
at http://grass.osgeo.org/download/software/.

30 YEARS OF GRASS GIS!


      Brief history

In 1982, Lloyd Van Warren, a University of Illinois engineering student, 
began development on a new computer program based on a master's thesis 
by Jim Westervelt that described a GIS package called LAGRID – the 
Landscape Architecture Gridcell analysis system. Thirty years ago, on 29 
July 1983, the user manual for this new system titled "/GIS Version 1 
Reference Manual/" was first published by J. Westervelt and M. O'Shea. 
The software continued its development at the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA/CERL) in 
Champaign, Illinois; and after further expansion version 1.0 was 
released in 1985 under the name *Geographic Resources Analysis Support 
System (GRASS)*. The GRASS GIS community was established the same year 
with the first annual user meeting and the launch of GRASSnet, one of 
the internet's early mailing lists. The user community expanded to a 
larger audience in 1991 with the "Grasshopper" mailing list and the 
introduction of the World Wide Web. The users' and programmers' mailing 
lists archives for these early years are still available online 
<http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/>.
In the mid 1990s the development transferred from USA/CERL to The Open 
GRASS Consortium (a group who would later generalize to become today's 
Open Geospatial Consortium -- the OGC <http://www.opengeospatial.org/>). 
The project coordination eventually shifted to the actual *international 
development team* made up of governmental and academic researchers and 
university scientists. Reflecting this shift to a project run by the 
users, for the users, in 1999 GRASS GIS was released the first time 
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). A detailed 
history of GRASS GIS can be found at http://grass.osgeo.org/history/.

Since these early days GRASS development has progressed and grown, 
adjusting with and often at the forefront of new technologies as they 
became available. Today GRASS's software development is maintained by a 
team of domain experts as visualized in this beautiful new video 
animation <http://youtu.be/MR4_5GSID2A> which stylistically details the 
codebase evolution and modifications from *1999 through to 2013*, up to 
and including the latest GRASS GIS 6.4.3 stable release.


      30 years of active growth: where are we now?

Recent versions of GRASS GIS come with exciting new features like:

  * A *new modern graphical user interface
    <http://grass.osgeo.org/screenshots/user-interface/>* complete with
    integrated workflow-wizards and interactive tools,
  * A *new Python interface
    <http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_and_Python>* to the core C
    geoprocessing libraries, permitting Python developers to create
    powerful new modules in a quick and simple way,
  * Fully-fledged *topological vector support*
    <http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/manuals/vectorintro.html> for
    editing and tools for topological analysis and data cleaning,
  * Hundreds of *new modules* to analyze raster and vector data of all
    scales and types, with hundreds more contributed in an active
    community repository,
  * Support for *massive data processing* (e.g. relevant for LiDAR
    processing) and Large File Support (> 2GB, 64-bit files on 32-bit
    systems),
  * A codebase *portable* to all of today's major Operating Systems,
  * Installed on everything from low-power dataloggers and field laptops
    to high performance Grid Engines and TOP500 supercomputers.

GRASS GIS is currently developed by a global team of around twenty core 
programmers, plus numerous add-on contributors, testers, and 
translators. Overall, more than seventy core developers have worked on 
the code in the past thirty years, making over fifty-thousand 
modifications to the code. All the while, hundreds more have provided 
peer review and improvements to algorithms and documentation while using 
GRASS GIS in professional, educational, and research contexts.


      Where to next?

Development on GRASS GIS continues with as much energy and interest as 
ever. *Version 6.4.3 has been released as a birthday present* 
<http://grass.osgeo.org/news/28/15/Stable-GRASS-GIS-6-4-3-released/>. 
Parallel to the *long-term maintenance* of the GRASS 6 stable series, 
effort is well underway on the new cutting-edge major release, *GRASS 
GIS 7* <http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass7/NewFeatures>, bringing 
with it many new features, modules, enhancements, and cleanups. As in 
the past, the GRASS GIS community is open to any contribution, be it in 
the form of programming, documentation, testing, financial sponsorship 
or any other form of support.

--
/http://grass.osgeo.org/
//M. Neteler (GRASS GIS PSC Chair) and GRASS Development Team/



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