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 OSGeo and Google Summer of Code Report 2007 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, about 4000 subscribers were counted in the various GRASS mailing lists.

Future strategy

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