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

[Russell Nelson]

Joel Peter William Pitt writes:
 > I wasn't aware public domain software required the source code
 > to be released...

The BSD license doesn't require the source code to be released.  Open
source code is only open source if it's the source you're releasing.
If you only release binaries, you can't exactly claim it's open source.

 > Well, the beauty with open source software is that you can
 > go on and start your own forked project if you find you can't
 > convince the developers here that things need to change...

Indeed, but that's never the first thing you do.  It's impolite.

 > But as the "President of the Open Source Initiative", I'm sure
 > you know that already. Nothing like throwing credentials
 > in to make people see things your way.

I'm not trying to convince, I'm trying to explain why I feel strongly
about this.  GRASS has the reputation of being "the open source GIS
package", which, technically, it is.  I, however, wouldn't recommend
it to anybody but a GIS expert.

 > There are several frontends out there already, you should be
 > speaking to them.

Okaybut.  GRASS qua GRASS still needs to have a user interface that
makes easy things easy.  If people are referred to GRASS, and they run
'grass' and they get the current user interface, then the front-end
may as well not exist.  For them, it doesn't.  I can make the
whizziest GUI in the world, but if it doesn't come with GRASS, what's
the point?

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