[GRASS5] Re: [Fwd: whinging about GRASS again]

[Mark P. Line]

Russell Nelson said:
> Mark P. Line writes:
>  > something that looks and works differently than the system they trained
>  > on, users are often either confused or convinced that the tool has a
>  > broken user interface.
>
> This is the "Everybody gets taught ARCinfo, so if they find GRASS
> hard, it's their teacher's fault" excuse.

It is not an excuse. It is an explanation, and one that holds up well in
my experience.

I've ignored all the rest of your "excuse" excuses, because they're all
instances of the "I have no cogent rebuttal" excuse. :)


>  > RN> So my hopes of having my suggestions accepted are low.
>  >
>  > First, GRASS has no grand tradition of open source in the GPL sense of
>  > open source. GRASS used to be in the public domain, and has only
>  > (relatively) recently been placed under open source constraints.
>
> "Open source constraints"?  Public domain software is open source
> software.  Open Source comes under many licenses; not just the GPL.
> See http://opensource.org/licenses/ .

Public domain software is not placed under *any* license of any kind.

Open Source software is software which complies with the Open Source
Definition which is also found at opensource.org. The criteria for
compliance contained in that Definition are constraints on software that
would otherwise be in the public domain.

So the statement that "public domain software is open source software" is
incorrect.

(The statement that "open source software is in the public domain" is also
incorrect, but nobody here has said that.)


>  > Third, I'm not sure what "accepted" means in the last sentence.
>  >
>  > If it means that you're concerned that your code might not find its way
>  > into future releases of GRASS,
>
> Yes, that is my concern.  Glynn Clements has already said "your
> proposal wasn't feasible.  Nothing has changed since then."

Then he's probably right. Why is that a problem?


> In other words, "if that's all you want to do, GRASS is the wrong
> package."  See what I mean?

I believe everybody here sees what you mean. In what way is it not the
case that, if that's all you want to do, GRASS is the wrong package?


>  > RN> I think that, for GRASS to achieve a larger user base (and
>  > RN> consequently larger developer base), it needs changes which will
> piss
>  > RN> off all current grass users.
>  >
>  > Does GRASS need a larger user base?
>
> I must wax philosophical.  I believe, as an item of faith, that life
> is too short to spend it writing software for just yourself.
> Consequently, when I write software, I want as many people to benefit
> from it as possible.  That's why I'm the President of the Open Source
> Initiative.  Helping people to benefit from open source is a priority
> for me.

For software that you write, it's your prerogative to pursue an infinitely
large user base if you wish.

In the case of GRASS, it's up to the GRASS community to decide the user
demographics that it wants to pursue. It's not up to the President of the
Open Source Initiative. Right?

In any event, this is not about people writing software just for
themselves. There are orders of magnitude more non-developer users of
GRASS than there are developers.


> I have many years of experience in using computers.

Okay. We'll try to keep up with you as best we can.


> I think the solution is just as you suggested: to create a front-end
> which is helpful.  Doesn't require any changes to GRASS.

Okay. Are we going to move this thread along to the topic of everything
that you find inadequate in the QGIS approach, then?


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX