In my presentation I briefly review 3 decades of Open Source GIS development, from the 1980th to the present.
See my slides:
Presentation file: Download presentation file (ODP) to get all the clickable links working!
The GRASS GIS community is delighted to present the outcome of the 4th Community Sprint that took place in a warm and sunny Prague, Czech Republic, from July 12 to July 18, 2013. The event happened after the Geoinformatics conference at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The Community Sprint was once more a creative gathering of both long-term and new developers, as well as users.
This meeting was held in the light of 30 YEARS OF GRASS GIS!
We wish to cordially thank the Department of Mapping and Cartography, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague for hosting and technical support. In particular, we gratefully acknowledge our association sponsors OSGeo and FOSSGIS e.V., and many individual donors: Peter Löwe, Andrea Borruso, Massimo Di Stefano, Alessandro Sarretta, Joshua Campbell, Andreas Neumann, Jon Eiriksson, Luca Casagrande, Karyn O Newcomb, Holger Naumann, Anne Ghisla, Helena Mitasova and Lubos Mitas, Dimitris Tamp, Mark Seibel, Markus Metz, and Tawny Gapinski. These financial contributions were used to cover costs such as meals and to help reducing travelling and accommodation expenses for participants with far arrival who came on own expenses.
Developers and users who joined the event came from various countries like Italy, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, Sri Lanka/France, USA and Germany.
The Community Sprint focused on:
A lot of topic oriented discussions happened among small groups of participants: for more detailed information, please visit the Wiki pages at https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Prague_2013 and the related discussion page at https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:GRASS_Community_Sprint_Prague_2013
About GRASS GIS
The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).
GRASS GIS Development Team, July 2013
Fourth (and last) release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 with improvements and stability fixes
A fourth release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 is now available.
Source code download:
Binaries download:
To get the GRASS GIS 6.4.3RC4 source code directly from SVN:
 svn checkout https://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20130710_grass_6_4_3RC4/
Key improvements of this release include some new functionality (assistance for topologically unclean vector data), fixes in the vector network modules, fixes for the wxPython based portable graphical interface (attribute table management, wxNVIZ, and Cartographic Composer), fixes in the location wizard for Datum transform selection and support for PROJ.4 version 4.8.0, improvements for selecting the Python version to be used, enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support, fixes in case of missing system DLLs), and more translations (esp. Romanian).
First time users should explore the first steps tutorial after installation.
Release candidate management at
https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/
Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.
In my presentation I briefly review 3 decades of Open Source GIS development, from the 1980th to the present.
See my slides:
Presentation file: Download presentation file (ODP) to get all the clickable links working!
The next “GRASS GIS Community Sprint” will take place from May 23 to May 28, 2012 in Prague, Czech Republic directly following the Geoinformatics FCE CTU 2012 conference.
This GRASS Community Sprint is a great occasion for you to support the development by actively contributing to the source code, manuals or likewise. It is a get together for GRASS project members and supporters to make decisions and tackle larger problems. For this meeting, we welcome people committed to improving the GRASS GIS project. This includes developers, documenters, bug reporters, translators and others.
Timing and Duration:
May 23, 2012 (day of arrival) – May 28, 2012 (day of departure)
Venue:
Department of Mapping and Cartography Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague
For more detailed information, please visit
https://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Prague_2012
GRASS GIS 6.4.2 released
19 February 2012
https://grass.osgeo.org
We are pleased to announce the release of a new stable version of GRASS GIS. This release fixes bugs discovered in version 6.4.1 of the program and adds a number of new features. This release includes over 760 updates to the source code since 6.4.1. As a stable release series, the 6.4 line will enjoy long-term support and incremental enhancements while preserving backwards-compatibility with the entire GRASS 6 line.
The new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) has been updated with many new features and tools. Python is now a fully supported scripting language, including an updated Python toolkit to simplify the authoring of personal scripts, support for NumPy based array calculations, and a Python application interface for the GRASS C libraries. Additionally, MS-Windows support continues to mature. GRASS 6.4.2 debuts ten new modules, a new GUI cartographic composer tool, a new GUI object-oriented modeling environment, and improved infrastructure for installing community supplied add-on modules.
Read the full story at
https://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass642.html
About GRASS GIS
The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) and geospatial analysis toolkit. For nearly three decades, GRASS has provided powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling of raster and vector data, visualization, the management and analysis of geospatial information, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and publication-quality hardcopy maps. GRASS has now been translated into twenty languages and supports an extensive array of data formats. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
GRASS differs from many other GIS software packages used in the academic and professional worlds in that it is developed and distributed by users for users, mostly on a volunteer basis. Its code and spatial processing algorithms are open and transparent, and the software is distributed free of charge. The source code is also freely available, allowing for immediate customization, examination of the underlying algorithms, the addition of new features, and faster identification and patching of bugs.
| We are pleased to announce the release of GRASS GIS 6.4.0, the first in the new line of 6.4 stable releases. As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support. The next release (6.4.1) will introduce a few new features which are still undergoing final testing, but after that all further 6.4 releases will be bugfix-only. Due to our highly conservative stabilization policy this is the first official version of GRASS to introduce new features since October 2006 and supersedes the previous stable line of GRASS 6.2. As such the floodgates are open and there are many new features to explore and many new structural improvements to be found in the software. GRASS 6.4 brings a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. Our new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) is debuted, Python is now a fully supported scripting language, and for the first time since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS will now run natively on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows! In addition to bringing the software to a host of new users, the ability to run GRASS on any common computer platform furthers our goal of open access to the software. We hope you will enjoy the ability to use this program on the systems that are most convenient to you and your work. Due to the freshness of WinGrass there may still be a few rough edges yet to discover, but after more than a year of dedicated testing and quality-assurance review we are very pleased with the results. Users can be confident to use this version for their day to day work, indeed due to the open development model many already do. Existing UNIX and Mac users will be happy to know that these new features do not disrupt the base GIS which remains as solid as ever and fully backwards compatible with earlier GRASS 6.0 and 6.2 releases. The venerable Tcl/Tk GUIs are also still available if you prefer to use them. The GRASS software including over 400 built-in analysis modules and 100 community supplied add-on modules and toolboxes can be downloaded for free from the main GRASS website at https://grass.osgeo.org, or from many local mirrors worldwide. In addition to the extensive documentation which comes with the software, our Wiki help system contains a wealth of user supplied tips and tricks, tutorials, and guides. Since 6.4 entered the testing phase work has begun on GRASS 7 and is progressing rapidly, including many new wxGUI improvements and tools which we hope to bring over for the upcoming 6.4.1 release. About GRASS GISThe Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) providing powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS has now been translated into twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. GRASS is a founding member of The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), a non-profit legal entity which has enjoyed extraordinary growth. We expect that this formal infrastructure will guarantee that the GRASS community will be well supported and vibrant far into the future. Screenshots
Platforms supported by GRASSGNU/Linux, Mac OS X/Darwin, Microsoft Windows (native using MinGW or with full UNIX support via Cygwin), Sun Solaris (SPARC/Intel), Silicon Graphics Irix, HP-UX, DEC-Alpha, AIX, the BSD family, iPAQ/Linux and other UNIX compliant platforms. GRASS runs on both 32 and 64 bit systems with large data file (>2GB) support for most key modules. Software download/CDROMThe new source code is available now and binary packages for major operating systems will be published shortly. What’s new in GRASS 6.4.0(selected improvements from the nearly 9,000 updates to the source code)
A more detailed description of changes can be found in the previous announcements of the GRASS 6.3 development preview release and the GRASS 6.4.0 release candidate series. We are always looking for testers, code developers, and technical writers to help us maintain and accelerate the development cycle. The GRASS GIS project is developed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (the GPL) in the open by volunteers the world over. GRASS differs from many other GIS software packages used in the professional world in that it is developed and distributed by users for users, mostly on a volunteer basis, in the open, and is given away for free. Emphasis is placed on interoperability and unlimited access to data as well as on software flexibility and evolution rate.
GRASS Development Team |
The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects – such as OSOR.eu and Semic.eu – on open source and on electronic data exchange.Â
Read more here.
In Munich, Germany, the OpenDocument Format (ODF) has become the main document exchange standard, along with the PDF format for non-editable files. This is a milestone in the ongoing migration project to Open Source (LiMux project) and a major improvement for the long-term interoperability. In 2012, 80% of the totally 14,000 computers in in the administration will be migrated to Linux.
Also the German Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) are migrating to Open Source.
Read more here.
Open source software hotspots by country around the world: Open Source Activity Map
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