[GRASSweb-list][RFC] GRASS monthly news

["Fernández-Victorio Arévalo, Gonzalo"]

OK. I've been thinking some time about this(and I've been occupied with
"real life tasks") but here I share my thoughts, as a proposal.

1.-What? Introduction
I think (and probably I'm not the only) that GRASS needs life desesperately.
The codebase is giant, but there are very few people contributing. 
We need to get new developers interested in GRASS. They don't have to be
interested in GIS in general, nor they have to come because they need GRASS
for xxxx. These would be welcome, but those are many more, are talented, and
willing to help. 
They (and we) need to know that GRASS is not a software project in
bugfixes-mode only. We all need to feel that GRASS is a software project in
evolution. 
What to do to attract more people? I know there are other answers ( [1] and
[2] are two, but not the only), but I want to give this answer as a start,
although I know that it alone won't be enough to revitalize GRASS:

I think some kind of periodical news could give "us" visibility in FLOSS
community, and give community feeling to ourselves.

2.-What? Detailed

I read grasslist, weblist and grass5, and I thought I could could extract
interesting threads. That was the beginning of my idea. But reading other
projects' periodical news, I got some ideas. So if I were to make Octuber
item today, it would carry something like:

a.-Newsflash
	5.0.3 RC5 ready for testing
	viewproj and v5dconvert
b.-Interesting threads
	Multiple terminal monitors
	GRASS license [creating a desktop GIS application using GRASS]
	C++ problems with gcc3.3
c.-Interview
	Developer: Eric Miller(*)
d.-Statistics
	Top list contributors
	Top cvs commits
	bugs


(*)I haven't contacted him. I don't know if he could give me an interview. I
don't even know if he he is ok or if his e-mail is active. But I know he did
good job, he has almost dissapeared, and maybe he could give answers to our
questions. And I know it will be difficult to elect the first, because it
could seem it's based in importance. So electing a non-currently-active
developer (AFAICS) is a good option.

In the future I would want to include a "module of the month" (explaining
the module in detail) or "task of the month", interview to users (and not
strictly developers), even related projects news ... But not at the
beginning.

People could, of course, contribute news they think are interesting, and are
related to GRASS.

3.-How?

a and b, just reading. c it's more difficult, because many people don't want
to answer questions from unkwnown people, and also I should prepare the
interview (what has he/she done?). d would need just a few scripts to access
cvs logs and web.

4.-When?
Once a month. Main reason is that's what I think I'm able to do. If there
were more people interested, maybe we could share the work and launch a
GRASS quarterly news or be even weekly. But once a month is what I think I'm
able to do. 
It should come in the first week of the month. During the month I would pay
attention to the threads of this lists. At the middle of the month I would
start contacting the interviewed and examining his background. Statistics
would be launched at the end. All would be edited on the first weekend of
the month.


I post this to weblist because this is my 1.1.5 in another proposal[3]. That
only had one comment. Maybe I should post to grass5?

Comments?


Gonzalo

[1] http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/weblist/2003-August/001138.html
[2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.grass.user/2412
[3] http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/weblist/2003-August/001156.html