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.
(… more pizza & beer for the developers)About the Community Sprint
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!
Join us at FOSS4G Central and Eastern Europe (FOSS4G-CEE) 2013 from 16th – 20th June, National Library of Romania, Bucharest, Romania.
You will meet well known Keynote Speakers (random order): Jeff McKenna, Paul C. Smits, Jáchym Čepický, Schuyler Erle, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Dirk Frigne, Markus Neteler, Alyssa Wright, and Radu Puchiu.
Check the long list of Practical Workshops and Oral Presentations at: https://2013.foss4g-cee.org/program/schedule
Check out for the additional Code Sprint, the Open GeoData Hackathon, and the Open Data Side Event.
How to arrive? See https://2013.foss4g-cee.org/venue/map
A second release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 with improvements and stability fixes is now available.
Source code:
 https://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
 https://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.3RC2.tar.gz
Selected Binaries (more will be published)
To get the RC2 source code from SVN:
 svn checkout https://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20121218_grass_6_4_3RC2/
An announcement has been drafted at
 https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.4.3RC2-News
Key improvements of the GRASS 6.4.3 release include some new functionality (image processing tools), major speedup for some vector modules, fixes for the wxPython based portable graphical interface, improvements for the Python API, enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support), and more translations.
Release candidate management at
 https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass6Planning
Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.
Thanks to all contributors!
The OSGeo Board of Directors has named Jeff McKenna as its new President. The previous President, Frank Warmerdam, has stepped down, and the OSGeo Board is extremely grateful for his leadership. Mr. McKenna brings years of experience in the geospatial industry, and has been involved in the MapServer web mapping project since its early days. He was also one of the founding forces behind the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) international conference, and has dedicated himself to promoting the use of Open Source geospatial software through FOSS4G events all around the world.
Mr. McKenna explains, “I’m honored to be named as the new President of OSGeo. I plan to continue the wonderful work of our past presidents Frank and Arnulf. The OSGeo community is now thriving and vibrant, with FOSS4G regional events operating all across the world; I plan to continue spreading this passion for Open Source geospatial, and help introduce our knowledge to both decision makers and technical users. Decision makers all around the world should be exposed to our experts through our communities, our regional events, our local chapters, and also through our professional service providers. There is much work still to be done in spreading our knowledge of Open Source geospatial through all of these networks.â€
The GRASS GIS team will organize a GRASS GIS Community Sprint from 2-7 Feb, 2013 in Genova, Italy. The sprint is at the same time of the “XIV Meeting degli Utenti Italiani GRASS e Gfoss” at the University of Genova.
We would like to invite you to financially support this upcoming Community Sprint! The past sprints have been very successful as we expect for the upcoming one.
Important Web page:
https://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Genova_2013
Please consider to donate:
https://grass.osgeo.org/donations/
Background info
The GRASS GIS Community Sprint is a great occasion for folks to support the development by actively contributing to the source code, manuals or likewise. The community sprint is a get-together for GRASS project members and supporters and related OSGeo projects to take decisions and tackle larger problems. For this meeting, we welcome people committed to improving the GRASS GIS project and the interfaces to QGIS, GDAL, PostGIS, R-stats. Sextante. gvSIG, OGC Services and more. This includes developers, documenters, bug reporters, translators and other OSGeo supporters. Not only the “C Tribe” will be addressed but also Python or whatever the participants prefer.
Earlier this Last year, in June, Don Meltz wrote an interesting blog “ArcGIS vs QGIS Clipping Contest Rematch” where he let compete ArcGIS and Quantum GIS in a clipping contest. The benchmark contest data set in question is a 878MB ZIP file (ContourClipTest.zip with the (guessed) EPSG Code 2260 – NAD83 / New York East (ftUS)). The blog page gained a lot of comments, even from ESRI since some ArcGIS versions crashed on this test data set.
Find below the various timings compiled from the blog and the comments:
| Software | Processing time | Hardware/Software |
| ArcGIS 9.3 | crash after 1h 9min: ERROR 999999: Error executing function. Invalid Topology [4gb file limit.] Failed to execute (Clip) | unknown |
| ArcGIS 10.0 | crash likewise | unknown |
| ArcGIS 10.1 | ESRI promise to calculate it in 34 seconds in this updated version (did anyone test?) | unknown |
| GlobalMapper (version?) | 30 mins | unknown |
| GlobalMapper v11.02 | 49 sec | Windows XP w/ 3.5GB RAM |
| Manifold 8 (64bit) | 31 min | Windows XP64 16 gb. RAM and 2.33 GHz |
Note: The two GlobalMapper results are a bit funny, perhaps always minutes?
| Software | Processing time | Hardware/Software |
| Quantum GIS (version?; Simple features) | 4-5 min | unknown |
| GRASS GIS 7 (topological GIS) | 5 min | Dell PowerEdge 2950 from 2008, Intel Xeon 2.66GHz, 8GB RAM |
| gvSIG | to be done | |
| PostGIS | to be done |
Notes: Hope volunteers will test this also on gvSIG and PostGIS (and other FOSSGIS)! Please report…
Follow
Follow