[GRASS-user] he ISPRS Student Consortium interviews the GRASS-GIS user mailing list

nikos.alexandris at felis.uni-freiburg.de nikos.alexandris at felis.uni-freiburg.de
Tue Jan 8 19:26:27 EST 2008


Dear members of the GRASS-GIS user mailing list,

please accept my apologies for abusing this list by sending
a (very) long post.

Herewith you are cordially invited to participate and share
some of your experiences using GRASS-GIS through an
"open"-interview.

If you like the idea you are kindly requested to take some
time, read carefully and, if you want, answer to some or to
all of the questions.

The deadline is Sunday the 13th of January 2008 at 12:00
CET


Kind regards from the "ISPRS Student Consortium"




(* Responsible for the compilation -- and the one to blame
if this doesn't work -- is the sender of this e-mail and
not the ISPRS Student Consortium!)


Here it goes...

============================================================================================
The ISPRS Student Consortium interviews the GRASS-GIS user
mailing list

[ An open-interview (like open-source) with developers and
users of the GRASS-GIS software ]
============================================================================================



What is this about?
-------------------

It is about an interview with users and developers of the
famous open-source GRASS-GIS software [1]. 

This interview is "open" for all members of the GRASS-user
mailing list [2] as it is directed to the mailing list and
not to a specific person.

It is rather an attempt to acquire some first impressions
about GRASS-GIS, about how the GRASS user list interacts
and its status in the field of geospatial applications at a
global scale.



What are the rules?
-------------------

* There are no rules! You might even want to answer
collectively. Just try to give as much as possible short
answers.

* The questions can be answered selectively (which means
only some of them or even none!)



Who is questioning?
-------------------

The Student consortium (SC) [3] of the International
Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) [4].

The SC acts within ISPRS Working Group VI/5 [5] and
represents the main student and researcher group, who share
the same interests in photogrammetry, remote sensing and
spatial information sciences. Its purpose is to serve as an
information exchange platform and organise student-specific
events.

The SC Newsletters [6] aim to inform SC members and other
people interested in the SC about its members' activities,
their research, international projects and more about
on-going geospatial applications at global scale.



Why?
----

In its first attempt to dedicate a part of the Newsletter
to the open-source [7] sector in the field of geospatial
applications, the SC is interviewing the GRASS user mailing
list to learn about the GRASS-GIS application itself and
its community based concept.

More open-source tools handling geospatial data will be
covered in the future through various sources of
information spreaded in the internet.



Who is questioned?
------------------

The GRASS-user mailing list.

Taken from its official webpage, GRASS (Geographic
Resources Analysis System) [8] is an open-source Geographic
Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data
management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps
production, spatial modelling and visualization. GRASS is
currently used in academic and commercial settings around
the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and
environmental consulting companies.



What will be the result of this "open-interview"?
-------------------------------------------------

If successful, the answers will be summarized and published
in the upcoming SC Newsletter (planned within January
2008).

To ensure the integrity of the original statements, the
final text will be reviewed before publishing from both the
ISPRS SC Newsletter editorial board and the GRASS user
mailing list.


Questions
---------

1. Why should a student choose GRASS to do his/her GIS
homework?


2. Why is there a widespread belief that GRASS, being an
open-source software, is targeted to highly specialised
users and developers?


3. There are many introductive tutorials and practical
examples upon how to use GRASS. Yet it seems difficult to
begin. How do you recommend to start using GRASS?


4. Is GRASS officially recognized by the Remote Sensing
user community? Can it be cited in peer-reviewed scientific
publications?


5. What is the potential of GRASS with respect to new
technologies like SAR and LIDAR data?


6. One typical difficulty, when working with various GIS
and/ or Remote Sensing software, is the transformation from
one file format to another (e.g. from ESRI Grid to GeoTIFF,
from ASCII vector to SVG)

   a. Which file formats, for both raster and vector data
models, can handle GRASS?

   b. What are your performance experiences using GRASS
with respect to the file format conversion? (i.e. speed,
data and  metadata integrity)


7. Are there any other important characteristics of
GRASS-GIS that you would like to address/ point-out for
beginners?



We hope that you will welcome our scientific curiousity and
its experimental spirit through this "open-interview". 


Thank you all in advance,

ISPRS SC



References
----------

[1]	GRASS-GIS

	http://grass.osgeo.org/


[2]	GRASS user mailing list

	http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user


[3]	ISPRS Student Consortium
 
	http://www.studentconsortium.isprs.org/


[4]	ISPRS

	http://www.isprs.org


[5]	ISPRS, Commission VI: Education and Outreach, Working
Group 5: Promotion of the Profession to Students,

	http://www.commission6.isprs.org/wg5/


[6]	ISPRS SC Newsletter

	http://www.photogrammetry.ethz.ch/~skocaman/SC/newsletter.html


[7]	Definition of Open source

	http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

	
---
Compiled by Nikos Alexandris


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