Dear members of the GRASS-GIS user mailing list, please accept my apologies for abusing this list by sending a (very) long post.
Herewith you are cordially invited to participate and share some of your experiences using GRASS-GIS through an "open"-interview. If you like the idea you are kindly requested to take some time, read carefully and, if you want, answer to some or to all of the questions. The deadline is Sunday the 13th of January 2008 at 12:00 CET Kind regards from the "ISPRS Student Consortium" (* Responsible for the compilation -- and the one to blame if this doesn't work -- is the sender of this e-mail and not the ISPRS Student Consortium!) Here it goes... ============================================================================================ The ISPRS Student Consortium interviews the GRASS-GIS user mailing list [ An open-interview (like open-source) with developers and users of the GRASS-GIS software ] ============================================================================================ What is this about? ------------------- It is about an interview with users and developers of the famous open-source GRASS-GIS software [1]. This interview is "open" for all members of the GRASS-user mailing list [2] as it is directed to the mailing list and not to a specific person. It is rather an attempt to acquire some first impressions about GRASS-GIS, about how the GRASS user list interacts and its status in the field of geospatial applications at a global scale. What are the rules? ------------------- * There are no rules! You might even want to answer collectively. Just try to give as much as possible short answers. * The questions can be answered selectively (which means only some of them or even none!) Who is questioning? ------------------- The Student consortium (SC) [3] of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) [4]. The SC acts within ISPRS Working Group VI/5 [5] and represents the main student and researcher group, who share the same interests in photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. Its purpose is to serve as an information exchange platform and organise student-specific events. The SC Newsletters [6] aim to inform SC members and other people interested in the SC about its members' activities, their research, international projects and more about on-going geospatial applications at global scale. Why? ---- In its first attempt to dedicate a part of the Newsletter to the open-source [7] sector in the field of geospatial applications, the SC is interviewing the GRASS user mailing list to learn about the GRASS-GIS application itself and its community based concept. More open-source tools handling geospatial data will be covered in the future through various sources of information spreaded in the internet. Who is questioned? ------------------ The GRASS-user mailing list. Taken from its official webpage, GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis System) [8] is an open-source Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modelling and visualization. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. What will be the result of this "open-interview"? ------------------------------------------------- If successful, the answers will be summarized and published in the upcoming SC Newsletter (planned within January 2008). To ensure the integrity of the original statements, the final text will be reviewed before publishing from both the ISPRS SC Newsletter editorial board and the GRASS user mailing list. Questions --------- 1. Why should a student choose GRASS to do his/her GIS homework? 2. Why is there a widespread belief that GRASS, being an open-source software, is targeted to highly specialised users and developers? 3. There are many introductive tutorials and practical examples upon how to use GRASS. Yet it seems difficult to begin. How do you recommend to start using GRASS? 4. Is GRASS officially recognized by the Remote Sensing user community? Can it be cited in peer-reviewed scientific publications? 5. What is the potential of GRASS with respect to new technologies like SAR and LIDAR data? 6. One typical difficulty, when working with various GIS and/ or Remote Sensing software, is the transformation from one file format to another (e.g. from ESRI Grid to GeoTIFF, from ASCII vector to SVG) a. Which file formats, for both raster and vector data models, can handle GRASS? b. What are your performance experiences using GRASS with respect to the file format conversion? (i.e. speed, data and metadata integrity) 7. Are there any other important characteristics of GRASS-GIS that you would like to address/ point-out for beginners? We hope that you will welcome our scientific curiousity and its experimental spirit through this "open-interview". Thank you all in advance, ISPRS SC References ---------- [1] GRASS-GIS http://grass.osgeo.org/ [2] GRASS user mailing list http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user [3] ISPRS Student Consortium http://www.studentconsortium.isprs.org/ [4] ISPRS http://www.isprs.org [5] ISPRS, Commission VI: Education and Outreach, Working Group 5: Promotion of the Profession to Students, http://www.commission6.isprs.org/wg5/ [6] ISPRS SC Newsletter http://www.photogrammetry.ethz.ch/~skocaman/SC/newsletter.html [7] Definition of Open source http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd --- Compiled by Nikos Alexandris _______________________________________________ grass-user mailing list grass-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user