[Qgis-community-team] Announcing the release of QGIS 1.3 'Mimas'

[Tim Sutton]

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Hi

MORREALE Jean Roc wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> I would like to get more explanation about this sentence :
> "We are starting to slowly add more native (i.e. non GRASS based)
> analytical tools to QGIS"
> 
> Is the grass replacement an aim for qgis ? Is there not a risk of
> duplication of effort ?
> 
> Regards,
> MORREALE Jean Roc
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-community-team mailing list
> Qgis-community-team at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-community-team
> 


I have a different way of looking at this. While it is good to have no
duplication of effort, the QGIS - GRASS integration is for many casual
users an obstacle. Firstly they have no idea what GRASS is, how it's
data models work and it feels like a foreign environment within QGIS.
Secondly integrating GRASS creates a lot of bulk and integration issues
for packaging etc. Thirdly in many situations diversity is the precursor
to innovation as looking at projects such as Gnome vs KDE can testify
to. Fourthly it's open source and we cannot really dictate how
developers spend their time. If there are folks wanting to make native
tools and they represent functionality that is interesting to a wider
audience, I think it is better to include these contributions rather
than exclude them because we expect people to use GRASS for anything
analytical related.

This is not an attempt to dismiss GRASS and many users find the GRASS
integration in QGIS extremely useful. We will continue to collaborate
with the GRASS folks while at the same time building up QGIS's own
capabilities when the opportunity presents itself.

Regards



- --
Tim Sutton, Linfiniti Consulting
==============================================
* QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
* Visit http://linfiniti.com for more information
  about the QGIS and FOSS services we provide.
* Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
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