GRASS Community

About the project

Freedom

The GRASS GIS project is developed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (the GPL) in the open 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 software flexibility and evolution rate (both added features and bug minimization).

• How the Open Source software development model works

• WikiPedia entry discussing the GPL

The GRASS Community and the Development Team

• The Community
• The Development Team
• The Translation Team
• The GRASS Project Steering Commitee

User Map

• GRASS User Map
• Description of new GRASS UserMap

Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)

• The new Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo.org) was established in Chicago. GRASS was proposed as founding project.
• Potential tasks and responsibilities (earlier proposal)
• GRASS Project Steering Commitee for the OSGeo Foundation
• GRASS Project Incubation at the OSGeo Foundation
• http://grass.osgeo.org/

Other Free GIS projects

• FreeGIS.org
• The DebianGIS Project
• Term Papers of GRASS Community

Getting Help

Mailing lists

• The primary point of contact for GRASS user help and development coordination is on the mailing lists. The answers to many questions you may have will probably already have been addressed and will be waiting for you in the mailing list archives.

• Because the mailing lists are so critical to the project's success, and support comes entirely from time-strapped volunteers and colleagues, we request some mailing list etiquette be followed.

IRC communication

IRC is live Internet Relay Chat. The GRASS project maintains a "chatroom" and if you are lucky there may be someone logged on who can give you a quick answer.

• How to participate in IRC communication (#grass, #osgeo, #gdal, #qgis, #mapserver and other channels)

Documentation

• You've already discovered the wiki. Go forth and explore!

Community resources

GRASS education (Free GIS education)

The GRASS education (Free GIS education) wiki site offers a start to collect links, text documents and small images. Furthermore it provides a discussion platform to develop and collect approaches, techniques, exercises and course structures for people giving GRASS and/or other Free GIS courses.

• GRASS education (Free GIS education)

Promoting GRASS GIS

• GRASS promotion team
• Promotional material
• GRASS migration hints
• GRASS Propaganda

Conferences

• FOSS4G2007 - Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2007 Victoria, Canada September 24-27, 2007
• FOSS4G2006 - Open Source Geospatial Communities Joint Conference 12-15 September 2006 in Lausanne, Switzerland with GRASS workshops...
• GRASS related workshops and presentations

GRASS Add-on modules

• GRASS AddOns software contributed by the community.