[GRASS5] Leaving

[Markus Neteler]

Hello Thierry,

On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 12:47:01PM +0100, Thierry Laronde wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We have some discussions (mainly monologues of my own) the past weeks
> and it seems clear that I'm not on the very same wavelength with others.
> And my tone has perhaps not always pleased people.
> As we used to say when I was in the army: "lost, but grouped": it's
> always less damaging to go grouped in a wrong direction than to be
> scattered all around.

It's really sad to loose a new developer! Leftover are only a few
people who really need support (well, my point of view). You posted
quite a few suggestions so far - unfortunately with little
response.

Looking back to
http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2003-November/016964.html
5.0/5.3: 2001: +5, -2 compared to 2000
	 2002: +1, -4 compared to 2001
	 2003: +3, -6 compared to 2002

Useless statistics, but it sheds some light on the situation:
We need to make GRASS programming more attractive.

> So the best method to see what is indeed the correct way is to test: I
> will go my own way starting from the last CERL public release, since my
> needs are not cutting edge ones and I have already done a fair amount 
> of cleaning (this means mainly deletions, and 
> standardisation/ansification is on the way ---and I have now a more 
> clear idea of the work done by Markus since, yes, one can not say that 
> if one wants to compile on a POSIX system with -Wall -Werror it does 
> compile out of the box!).

Mhhh, time to fork the project? Maybe some developers would join you...
(recalling the license discussion). I agree with you that more radical
changes are needed, as already posted several times.
Maybe LGPL'ed libraries with GPL'ed application layer? Well, most
developers have posted their opinion on this already.

> My plan are, too, to resurrect the X Window/Motif interface which is far
> more challenging, at least for me: I know at the moment strictly nothing
> about Motif programming and there has been a fair amount of changes
> since 1991...

If Motif is a good choice, I am not sure. Looks a bit dated.

> But open source is here precisely for people to learn and to adjust for
> their exact needs.

Agreed.

Markus Neteler