[GRASSLIST:1251] Re: creating a desktop GIS application using GRASS

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 09:14:37AM -0400, Bill Dickinson Jr wrote:
> Looks like I need to look deeper into the GPL issue. If nothing else, 
> if I get to the point of being able to release a commercial product 
> but the GPL blocks me doing it with GRASS then there becomes a solid 
> argument for changing the licensing. 

You can do a commercial product with GRASS,
it just cannot be proprietary Software.

> If the GRASS licensing does not 
> make it easy to create a commercial product out of it then I would be 
> forced to develop solely for ESRI, ENVI, and IDRISI. 

It is your choice, you can also develop a Free Software extension for GRASS.
If you develop proprietary you are limiting the freedom of your users.

> If commercial 
> developers continue to run into the same problem then GRASS will not 
> expand as us users would like and will continue to be a nifty little 
> piece of freeware for the radical fringe to play with (my opinion, of 
> course).

This is the same argument which was made against GNU-systems years ago.
Fortunately the picture starts to change more and more recently.

> But, as you say, I won't give up. ;-)  We are still a year or two 
> away from any commercial product using GRASS as the basic research 
> still needs to be done, and a lot can happen in that time. If I get 
> the initial research money, then I will be able to start asking for a 
> larger pot from NASA that could include some GRASS development of our 
> own. I imagine that would be helpful to the overall GRASS development 
> effort no matter what else comes of it. ;-)

Yes, and most helpful if the results are published again.

> I am also getting ready to submit a research proposal to NASA for the 
> visualization of environmental GIS data using GRASS and NVIZ. This 
> will be mostly a research project to determine whether an open-source 
> software solution is useful to NASA, though we are expecting to show 
> a useful application of visualized GIS data in the daily operations 
> of a federal installation.
> 
> I think these are the types of "success stories" with GRASS that need 
> to happen before GRASS can become a more mainstream desktop GIS 
> application. I imagine that there are already a lot of such stories 
> and examples from people that have been using GRASS a lot longer then 
> I have, they just need to get out to the masses somehow.

True, we should get more of this success stories published again.
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