[GRASS5] A request for control

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Bruce,

On Wed, Sep 20, 2000 at 09:51:44AM -0500, B. Byars wrote:
> Well, I was waiting for something like this.  First off, I have to say
> thank you to all the developers out there who work so hard on
> keeping things moving forward.  This community has grown
> tremendously in the past year.

I basically see the reason for this in the open development model
and the real free software license of GRASS.

> We here at Baylor have since
> been working on what will be GRASS 6.0 (real prelim stuff now),
> experimenting with certain things.  

I know that Bruce is the head for Grass4.3 and Markus for GRASS5.
And it is fine. 

If Baylor is working on GRASS6 I hope that they will open their
experiments for the developers and the public. So we can try and
discuss them. Otherwise I cannot see how this can actually be a GRASS6.
So I am looking forward to see your proposal for the next version of GRASS.

(On the other hand nobody is keeping anybody from doing with GRASS what
they want, as long as the license is obeyed.)

> Our staff provides a tremendous amount of personalized support for the
> community, which we estimate has grown to 35-40k users (support can
> go upwards of 60-75 email per day).  We've been watching how things
> have been evolving and are very pleased with the response from users.

This is good news. Thanks for sharing them.

> However, I agree with Rich in that lately GRASS has become more of
> a hackers tool than a useful GIS in some respects.  

Can you give me any facts which support this claim?
From what I see GRASS5 development has accelerated and mostly towards
long term stability.

> Thus, I agree with an
> immediate feature freeze.

It is in the works and was proposed a couple of times now.
Though the manager for GRASS5 has to decide. (See Markus post.)

> We here work with commercial firms in some of our projects and I've
> seen what happens to good products when too much is done to them.

Agreed.

> Simple is better.  

This is exactly the direction in which GRASS is going.
I would be interested to hear why people might get the impression that
it is not the case.

> We are part of a laboratory that does much more than just GRASS work
> and to be honest don't have the luxury of working each and every day
> on GRASS issues other than support, which we have made a priority.  If
> things move too slowly for someone, I'm sorry.  We've got to keep the
> lights on and food on the table.

Well there is nothing wrong with doing your things in your speed, 
but I fail to see why GRASS should move at the same speed if there
people having the competence and the experience to move the development
faster and more stable.

Deciding the future of such a big project in completly private discussions
is probably not a good idea. 
I am not saying that we should make a public vote about GRASS future, 
but in the Linux Kernel developmemt, Rich was suggesting: 
each step is discussed quite intensely.  
This is also the way science works and I believe GRASS development
should work.

Regards,
	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project				            (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
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