Community based software development: The GRASS GIS project

Tomorrow I’ll give a talk at University of Trento about the question why free software development works. Focus will be on GRASS, a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, spatial modeling, and visualization. The project has an outstanding history as it was originally started a military project, but in the public domain. With the advent of Internet and related network based development tools a community was formed. Nowadays, both users and developers are spread over the globe and manage to develop this software with low administrational overhead and a good communication culture. This seminar reviews the technical and social aspects of this Free GIS project.

You can get the seminar slides here.