Chirp!!!!

[Mark Line]

As promised last Fall, we've finally reached the point where we can
begin to plan the restart of Chirp! production. Legal questions
concerning potential conflict-of-interest issues have been rectified,
and the project can proceed.


I will remain General Editor of Chirp!, and it will continue to be
published by Open Pathways. The basic legal change is that I am no
longer connected with Open Pathways except by marriage.


Due to the demands on my time from my "day job", I can no longer write
the bulk of each issue myself. This leaves exactly two options: (a)
enough people can be found within the GRASS community who are willing
to monitor part of the GRASSHopper mail traffic and write up review
articles for Chirp! as sufficient material accrues, or (b) this is not
the case, with the unused portions of all paid subscriptions to be
refunded by the publisher.


In order to make sure option (b) does not have to happen, I now wish
to call upon all interested members of the GRASS community to consider
contributing some time to the production of Chirp! starting with a
January or February 1995 issue. GRASSHopper mail traffic can amount to
several hundred messages per month, and the goal is for each issue of
Chirp!  to review all the traffic from the most recent month AS WELL
AS one month's worth of traffic from the vast backlog of material.
This volume, plus some occasional feature articles written especially
for publication in Chirp!, more than suffices to fill a 60-page
periodical each month.

Reviewing all the mail traffic for a single issue of Chirp! can be a
daunting task for one person, or even for two or three people. If
the number of contributing editors were to increase to reflect the
vast size of the GRASS user community, then this division of labor
would leave only a small, relatively straightforward piece of work for
each individual contributor. Twenty percent of the gross revenue from
Chirp! is redistributed to its contributors as royalties, and a
contributor can do as much or as little as s/he has time for.

===

Please direct editorial correspondence (including manuscripts and
offers to contribute) to me, as given below.

The publisher's point of contact (for subscriptions and
publisher-related inquiries) is

          Marina Schneider         Phone: +1-217-359-5782
          Open Pathways              FAX: +1-217-359-5782
          PO Box 11197             Email: mschneid at prairienet.org
          Champaign, IL 61826
          USA

Marina will send out a news release with all relevant information
about the publication as soon as we can be sure that enough
contributing editors are available to make Chirp! a longer-term
endeavor. A second false-start would not be a very good idea.

===

Thanks very much for your consideration, my apologies to those of you
who have had to wait so long for the second issue of Chirp!, and my
heartfelt thanks for your patience and ongoing support.


-- Mark

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Mark P. Line
Control Data Systems, Inc.

GRASS Development Project Manager   phone +1-217-352-6511 ext.6600
USACERL                               fax +1-217-373-6724
P.O. Box 9005		            email Mark.Line at cdc.com
Champaign, IL 61826-9005                  line at ginko.cecer.army.mil
USA
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