GRASS GIS Report 2007

GRASS Project Steering Committee 2007 Annual Report
This report is a summary of activities undertaken by the GRASS-PSC. It is expected that portions of this document will be included in the OSGeo Annual Report, and this document is not meant to be entirely inclusive.

Report Period

 * This report covers the period of November 1st, 2006 until December 31st, 2007.
 * Contact name: Markus Neteler
 * PSC Members: Michael Barton, Dylan Beaudette, Hamish Bowman, Massimiliano Cannata, Brad Douglas, Paul Kelly, Helena Mitasova, Scott Mitchell, Markus Neteler, Maciej Sieczka

Formation Motion
The GRASS-PSC was formally convened on September 11, 2006, with Markus Neteler being appointed chair. David Sampson is acknowledged for pushing on the formation of the GRASS-PSC. Guidelines for the operation of the PSC and its formal connection to the GRASS project were extensively discussed for a number of months and formally adopted on 6 April 2007.

2006 Activities

 * 20 Dec 2006: GRASS GIS / OSGeo Newsletter Published - The first combined GRASS-News / OSGeo-News volume is available
 * 12 Dec 2006: GRASS 6.2.1 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.0 source code
 * GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to S. Pallecchi (granted, 12 Dec 2006)
 * GRASS-PSC: PSC Chair motion (chair: M Neteler, 9 Dec 2006, see related email message)
 * GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to R. Antolin (granted, 8 Dec 2006)
 * RFC 2: Legal aspects of code contributions (adopted 8 Dec 2006)
 * 06 Dec 2006: GRASS 6.2.1RC1 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.0 source code
 * 31 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0 released - The stable version is published: Source code available now, packaged installers for major platforms are currently being built and will follow shortly
 * 24 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC3 released - The last release candidate
 * 06 Oct 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC2 released - Approaching the final release
 * 26 Sep 2006: GRASS 6.2.0RC1 released - The first release candidate
 * 18 Sep 2006: GRASS 6.2.0beta3 released - The last beta version

Early to Mid 2007 Activities

 * Summer: participation in Google Summer of Code 2007 (Under the OSGeo umbrella) with two projects (now in the main release)
 * GRASS-PSC: CVS write access to P. Marcondes for PT translations (granted, 2 June 2007)
 * 26 Jul 2007: GRASS 5.4.1 released - Courtesy release containing several bug fixes for legacy users
 * 16 Jul 2007: GRASS 6.2.2 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.1 source code
 * 29 May 2007: GRASS 6.2.2RC1 released - Bugfix release candidate
 * RFC 1: Project Steering Committee Guidelines (extensively discussed and adopted 6 April 2007)
 * Italian GRASS and GFOSS Users Meeting - GRASS and GFOSS Users Meeting, Palermo (Italy), 14-16 Feb 2007
 * 12 Feb 2007: New GRASS bug and wish tracker - Gforge based
 * 10 Feb 2007: GRASS GIS 6.2.1 winGRASS/Cygwin binaries available - download package

Mid to Late 2007 Activities

 * OSGeo "incubation" process (GRASS Incubation Progress): almost completed, waiting for mentors approval to reach graduation
 * Migration to OSGeo source code and bug tracker infrastructure (after many years successful hosting by Intevation GmbH)
 * 30 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC3 released - Technology preview release candidate 3
 * 27 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.2.3 released - This release fixes several bugs discovered in the 6.2.2 source code
 * 20 Nov 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC2 released - Technology preview release candidate 2
 * 24 Oct 2007: GRASS 6.3.0RC1 released - Technology preview release candidate
 * 21 Oct 2007: GRASS 6.2.3RC1 released - Bugfix release candidate
 * 24-27 Sep 2007: progress report, workshop and several talks presented at FOSS4G2007
 * 19 Sep 2007: OSGeo Journal Volume 2 Published - The second volume of the new Journal
 * 15 Aug 2007: test version of a new data set (Spearfish replacement) released

User statistics

 * End of 2007, more than 4000 subscribers were counted in the various GRASS mailing lists.

Future strategy
Establish GRASS as GIS backbone, especially for other OSGeo projects.