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Impressive GRASS GIS Web site statistics

Just to update you on the GRASS Web statistics development, here the grass.osgeo.org statistics (remember, we have MANY mirror sites):

Month Unique Number Pages Hits Bandwidth
visitors of
visits
Jan 2008 39223 74088 291166 715946 101.23 GB
Feb 2008 38984 74043 218314 623770 107.09 GB
Mar 2008 40674 73389 223666 621816 107.04 GB
Apr 2008 5490 15702 135134 403726 220.87 GB
May 2008 20613 104556 912263 2242942 1442.31 GB

(this includes of course search engine traffic)

It appears that many visitors came back in May who downloaded the long awaited GRASS 6.3.0 release from 23 Apr 2008.

Some outstanding hits for May (views, only grass.osgeo.org):
10095 /grass63/binary/mswindows/native/
 3271 /grass63/binary/mswindows/native/WinGRASS-6.3.0-Setup.exe

This points out of obvious need for a portable, in this case also MS-Windows compliant GIS which GRASS 6.3.0 now is! Fetch native winGRASS with installer or GRASS for MacOSX or GRASS for Linux or …

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Proposal: OSGeo Cartographic Library

GRASS, QGIS and others are in the need of their own map printing tools for high quality output but these projects should not start from scratch. There is a wealth of underlying code already in Mapserver, Mapguide etc which could be re-used in the terms of their respective licenses and certainly of programming language compatibility. A joint OSGeo Cartographic Library comes to mind.

See also the ongoing related discussion!

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GRASS GIS releases version 6.3.0

GRASS GIS releases version 6.3.0
23 April 2008
https://grass.osgeo.org

GRASS 6.3.0 is a “technology preview” release, the first beta on the path to GRASS 6.4-stable, and also marks the start of work on GRASS 7. As such GRASS 6.3.0 is not intended to be a stable release with ongoing support, but after five months of quality-assurance review users can be confident to use this version for their day to day work, indeed due to the open development model many already do.

This release brings hundreds of new module features, supported data formats, and language translations, as well as a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. A prototype of the new wxPython user interface is debuted, and for the the first since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS will run on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows. This is currently still in an experimental state and we hope that widespread testing of 6.3.0 will mean the 6.4 release of WinGRASS will be fully functional and robust. Existing 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 GRASS 6.2 releases.

Several infrastructure changes accompany this release with the project becoming a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). This includes a new home for the website, the Wiki help system, source code repository, community add-on module repository, integrated bug tracking system, and formal membership for the project in a non-profit legal entity. We hope that these changes will guarantee that the GRASS community will be well supported and vibrant well into the future.

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for spatial modeling, visualization of both raster and vector data, geospatial data management and analysis, processing of satellite and aerial imagery, and production of sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS combines powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines into a single integrated software package.

The GRASS GIS project is developed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (the GPL) 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. The source code is freely available allowing for immediate customization, examination of the underlying algorithms, addition of new features, and fast bug fixing.

GRASS is currently used around the world in academic and commercial settings as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.

Software download at https://grass.osgeo.org/download/ and numerous mirror sites.

Full story at https://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass630.html

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Fifth release candidate of GRASS 6.3.0 now available

A fifth release candidate of GRASS 6.3.0 is now available:

Source code download:
https://grass.osgeo.org/grass63/source/grass-6.3.0RC5.tar.gz

An initial announcement has been drafted at
https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.3.0RC5-News

Key fixes include improved portability for MS-Windows (native support), several module fixes, and especially the introduction of a new, Python based portable graphical user interface which includes a new vector digitizer.

About GRASS GIS:
Commonly referred to as GRASS, this is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, 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. GRASS is official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

Web site: https://grass.osgeo.org/

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FOSS4G Proceedings Now Available – OSGeo Journal Volume 3

Tyler Mitchell, Executive Director of OSGeo reports:

The OSGeo Journal team is pleased to announce the availability of Volume 3. This volume of the Journal is dedicated to publishing the proceedings from the FOSS4G 2007 conference held in September. 14 different papers, representing over 35 authors were contributed. They cover a wide range of Integration, Development, Topical Interest and Case Study material.

You can access the Journal as a print-ready PDF or as individual PDF articles from:
https://www.osgeo.org/journal/volume3

Our next volume will be delayed until the first quarter of 2008. If you are interested in submitting articles, please add your name to:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Journal_Volume_4

Enjoy the articles and best wishes for the New Year!

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GRASS GIS releases version 6.2.3

27 November 2007
https://grass.osgeo.org

The development team is happy to announce that a new bugfix version of GRASS GIS has been released today. This release fixes a number of bugs discovered in the 6.2.2 source code. It is primarily for stability purposes and adds minimal new features. Besides bug fixes it also includes a number of new message translations and updates for the help pages and projection database.

Highlights include further maturation of the GRASS 6 GUI, vector, and database code. Some improvements have been backported from the GRASS 6.3 development branch where new development continues at a strong pace of approximately one code commit every hour, including major work on an all new cross-platform wxPython GUI and a native MS Windows port (from 6.3.0 onwards).

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) combining powerful raster, vector, remote sensing and and geospatial processing engines into 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 4D presentation graphics and hardcopy maps.

GRASS is currently used around the world in academic and commercial settings as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. It runs on a variety of popular hardware platforms and is Free open-source software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

GRASS is a proposed founding project of the new Open Source Geospatial Foundation. In support of the movement towards consolidation in the open source geospatial software world, GRASS is tightly integrated with the latest GDAL/OGR libraries. This enables access to an extensive range of raster and vector formats, including OGC-conformal Simple Features. GRASS also makes use of the highly regarded PROJ.4 software library with support for most known map projections and the easy definition of new and rare map projections via custom parameterization. Strong links are maintained with the QuantumGIS and R Statistics projects with integrated GRASS toolkits available for both.

Software download at https://grass.osgeo.org/download/ and numerous
mirror sites.

Full story at https://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass623.html

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New GRASS Book published: Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach

The new edition of Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach is now available! With this third edition, we enter the new era of GRASS 6, the first release that includes substantial new code developed by the International GRASS Development Team. The dramatic growth in open source software libraries has made GRASS 6 development more efficient, and has enhanced GRASS interoperability with a wide range of open source and proprietary geospatial tools. The book is based on GRASS 6.3.

Thoroughly updated with material related to GRASS6, the third edition includes new sections on attribute database management and SQL support, vector networks analysis, lidar data processing and new graphical user interfaces. All chapters are updated with numerous practical examples using the first release of a comprehensive, state-of-the-art geospatial data set. This new OSGeo Educational data set along with additional material can be downloaded from https://www.grassbook.org/

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First release candidate of GRASS 6.3.0 now available

A first release candidate of GRASS 6.3.0 is now available:

https://grass.itc.it/grass63/source/
-> grass-6.3.0RC1.tar.gz

An initial announcement has been drafted at
https://grass.itc.it/announces/announce_grass630.html
(state April 2007, further fixes need to be merged in)

Key fixes include improved portability for MS-Windows
(native support), hundreds of fixes, TclTk based
portable graphical interface and much new functionality.

Release candidate management at
https://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_6.3_Feature_Plan

Please test, test, test…

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OSGeo Celebrates 1st Anniversary

Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo’s Executive Director, illustrates in a recent posting the many highlights from the first year of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Read more at https://www.osgeo.org/tyler/

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First combined GRASS-News / OSGeo-News volume published

The GRASS-News editors and OSGeo Promotion and Visibility Committee announce the first combined GRASS-News / OSGeo-News volume. You can find the full pdf (5.3 MB) as well as PDFs of individual articles on the GRASS webpage:
https://grass.itc.it/newsletter/index.php
or directly via:
https://www.osgeo.org/content/news/news_archive/GRASS_OSGeo_News_vol4.pdf

A first edition of OSGeo-News will be published in 2007 with interesting articles covering various topics of OpenSource projects. Please visit https://www.osgeo.org in the next couple of weeks to find more detailed information how to submit articles.

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