[GRASS5] GRASS releases - some remarks

[Markus Neteler]

Hello developers,

another time I have received new developed source code
based on GRASS 5.0 - in this case the internationalization
of tcltkgrass and NVIZ.
I feel that we either need a release of 5.3 or that
we should somehow modify the web pages to make clear
that new developments should be at least based
on 5.3 (for vectors: 5.7).
Also, as posted earlier, I received other comments that
without an official release (of 5.3) they would stick
with 5.0.

Sounds a bit unfortunate to me, so let me put again
into discussion the suggestion to publish a 5.3.0 version.

[hey: 5.3 indicates *development*]

Look at the statistics (only HTTP, rsync/FTP not included):
http://grass.itc.it/webalizer/usage_200402.html#TOPURLS

-> Top 10 of 59396 Total URLs By KBytes (Feb 2004)
# hits
1 430 /grass5/binary/linux/grass5.0.3_i686-pc-linux-gnu_bin.tar.gz
2 353 /grass5/binary/windows_cygnus/wingrass_generic/grass5.0.2_i686-pc-cygwin_bin.tar.gz
3 283 /grass5/binary/windows_cygnus/wingrass_xserver/grass5.0.3_i686-pc-cygwin_bin.tar.gz
4 388 /grass5/source/grass-5.0.3_src.tar.gz
5 173 /grass5/binary/mac_os_x/grass5.0.2_powerpc-apple-darwin6.5_bin.tar.bz2
7 104 /grass5/source/grass-5.0.0_src.tar.gz
9  62 /grass5/source/grass-5.0.2_src.tar.gz

I can only see 5.0.x downloads in the TOP10 list.

While the nice features are in 5.7, most developers work in 5.3
and the users download 5.0 :-)

We should improve the situation and make available at least 5.3
to a wider audience.

Markus