A second release candidate of GRASS GIS 6.4.3 with improvements and stability fixes is now available.

Source code:
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.3RC2.tar.gz

Selected Binaries (more will be published)

• http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/native/WinGRASS-6.4.3RC2-1-Setup.exe
• http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-grass
• http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton/files/grass_mac/OSX10.6-snowleopard/GRASS-6.4.3RC2.pkg.zip
• http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tzotsos:/Application:/Geo/

The OSGeo Board of Directors have named Jeff McKenna as its new President. The previous President, Frank Warmerdam, has stepped down, and the OSGeo Board is extremely grateful for his leadership. Mr. McKenna brings years of experience in the geospatial industry, and has been involved in the MapServer web mapping project since its early days. He was also one of the founding forces behind the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) international conference, and has dedicated himself to promoting the use of Open Source geospatial software through FOSS4G events all around the world.

Mr. McKenna explains, “I'm honored to be named as the new President of OSGeo. I plan to continue the wonderful work of our past presidents Frank and Arnulf. The OSGeo community is now thriving and vibrant, with FOSS4G regional events operating all across the world; I plan to continue spreading this passion for Open Source geospatial, and help introduce our knowledge to both decision makers and technical users.  Decision makers all around the world should be exposed to our experts through our communities, our regional events, our local chapters, and also through our professional service providers.  There is much work still to be done in spreading our knowledge of Open Source geospatial through all of these networks.”

The GRASS GIS team will organize a GRASS GIS Community Sprint from 2-7 Feb, 2013 in Genova, Italy. The sprint is at the same time of the "XIV Meeting degli Utenti Italiani GRASS e Gfoss" at the University of Genova.

We would like to invite you to financially support this upcoming Community Sprint! The past sprints have been very successful as we expect for the upcoming one.

Important Web page:
http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Community_Sprint_Genova_2013

Please consider to donate:
http://grass.osgeo.org/donations/

Background info
The GRASS GIS Community Sprint is a great occasion for folks to support the development by actively contributing to the source code, manuals or likewise. The community sprint is a get-together for GRASS project members and supporters and related OSGeo projects to take decisions and tackle larger problems. For this meeting, we welcome people committed to improving the GRASS GIS project and the interfaces to QGIS, GDAL, PostGIS, R-stats. Sextante. gvSIG, OGC Services and more. This includes developers, documenters, bug reporters, translators and other OSGeo supporters. Not only the "C Tribe" will be addressed but also Python or whatever the participants prefer.

Earlier this Last year, in June, Don Meltz wrote an interesting blog "ArcGIS vs QGIS Clipping Contest Rematch" where he let compete ArcGIS and Quantum GIS in a clipping contest. The benchmark contest data set in question is a 878MB ZIP file (ContourClipTest.zip). The blog page gained a lot of comments, even from ESRI since some ArcGIS versions crashed on this test data set.

Find below the various timings compiled from the blog and the comments:

Proprietary software

Free and Open Source Software

The program of the GFOSSDAY 2012 + OSMit2012 @ Torino, Italy, has been published:
http://www.gfoss.it/drupal/gfossday2012/programma

We offer there a GRASS GIS workshop on Friday 16th Nov 2012 at 9:30. You are welcome!

Location:
Centro Incontri Regione Piemonte, Corso Stati Uniti 23, Torino, Italy

Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan was honored today with the 2012 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software during the inaugural session of the FOSS4G-India 2012 conference in Hyderabad, India. The award was presented by Ravi Kumar and Vundavallu Aruna Kumar, Member of Parliament. Venka received a memento on behalf of the OSGeo-India Chapter. Venka's dedication to FOSS4G and his community work around the world, promoting open source geospatial, is second to none. He has been involved in OSGeo since the foundation was formed in 2006, and we are lucky to have such a strong global voice in him. The OSGeo foundation wishes to thank Venka for his wonderful dedication.

Background

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities. In the early 80's, Sol assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System). This software was arguably the first open source GIS software in the world. Sol would later go on to release and maintain PC MOSS. He was also one of the first involved in public data translator utilities. Utilities that he developed for converting DEMs and reading SDTS files were contributed back to the geospatial community, and are still available today. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM is still available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/. Sadly, after fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for almost a decade, Sol died April 23, 1999 in bed. His legacy will always live on in the GFOSS world.

Recipients

2012: Venkatesh Raghavan
2011: Martin Davis
2010: Helena Mitasova
2009: Daniel Morissette
2008: Paul Ramsey
2007: Steve Lime
2006: Markus Neteler
2005: Frank Warmerdam

In winGRASS 7 (download standalone installer) the Windows batchfiles for use with R (http://code.google.com/p/batchfiles/) are now integrated for a smooth GRASS-R-coupling in MS-Windows. For the usage see here:
http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/R_statistics#Usage_III

Note that this integration is available for Linux users for a long time, however, finally also the winGRASS user can enjoy this integration!

Thanks to Helmut Kudrnovsky from the GRASS GIS team and to the Windows batchfiles for use with R team.

In order to prepare the upcoming GRASS GIS 6.4.3 release, a major bugtracker cleanup has been done for GRASS 6 over the past few days. More than open 370 trac tickets (back to GRASS 6.4.0) were revisited, updated or closed: the GRASS GIS bugsquashing team submitted over 140 code changes, and subsequently 88 tickets could be closed in these few days. The few remaining critical tickets are being worked on, leading to a new stable GRASS GIS 6.4.3 release to be expected soon.

A big WELCOME to the new  OSGeo charter members!

• Barend Kobben           Netherlands
• Angelos Tzotsos         Greece
• Anita Graser               Austria
• Victor Olaya                Spain
• Pedro-Juan Ferrer       Spain
• Andrea Aimee             Italy
• Jean-Roc Morreale      France
• Serena Coetzee          South Africa
• Michael Smith            USA
• Karel Charvat             Czech Republic
• Jan Jezek                    Czech Republic
• Vasile Craciunescu     Romania
• Thomas Bonfort          France
• Mauricio Miranda       Argentina
• Peter Löwe                  Germany
• Massimiliano Cannata    Italy
• P.K.Sinha                     India
• Brian Hamlin               USA
• Ragi Yaser Burhum     Peru
• Dimitris Kotzinos       Greece
• César Medina             Chile
• Doug Newcomb          USA

The next "GRASS GIS Community Sprint" will take place from May 23 to May 28, 2012 in Prague, Czech Republic directly following the Geoinformatics FCE CTU 2012 conference.

GRASS GIS 6.4.2 released
19 February 2012
http://grass.osgeo.org

We are pleased to announce the release of a new stable version of GRASS GIS. This release fixes bugs discovered in version 6.4.1 of the program and adds a number of new features. This release includes over 760 updates to the source code since 6.4.1. As a stable release series, the 6.4 line will enjoy long-term support and incremental enhancements while preserving backwards-compatibility with the entire GRASS 6 line.

The new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) has been updated with many new features and tools. Python is now a fully supported scripting language, including an updated Python toolkit to simplify the authoring of personal scripts, support for NumPy based array calculations, and a Python application interface for the GRASS C libraries. Additionally, MS-Windows support continues to mature.  GRASS 6.4.2 debuts ten new modules, a new GUI cartographic composer tool, a new GUI object-oriented modeling environment, and improved infrastructure for installing community supplied add-on modules.

Read the full story at
  http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass642.html

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) and geospatial analysis toolkit. For nearly three decades, GRASS has provided powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling of raster and vector data, visualization, the management and analysis of geospatial information, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and publication-quality hardcopy maps. GRASS has now been translated into twenty languages and supports an extensive array of data formats. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

GRASS differs from many other GIS software packages used in the academic and professional worlds in that it is developed and distributed by users for users, mostly on a volunteer basis. Its code and spatial processing algorithms are open and transparent, and the software is distributed free of charge. The source code is also freely available, allowing for immediate customization, examination of the underlying algorithms, the addition of new features, and faster identification and patching of bugs.

The 50.000th svn commit comes from Martin Landa!

USGS has published a new nice data set called the "Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010" (GMTED2010). It is offered at three different resolutions (approximately 1,000, 500, and 250 meters).

Example (MEA = mean dataset) Trento - Garda Lake - Verona area (Northern Italy):

Watch how the community based GRASS GIS software development works! You can see how the individual contributors modify and expand the source code.

It is fairly easy to create 3D buildings from OpenStreetMap (OSM) maps, essentially by extruding the 2D footprint polygons to 3D.

For the procedure using OSGeo software, see

http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/Extrude_2D_polygons_to_3D

A first release candidate of GRASS 6.4.2 is now available.

Source code:
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
 http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.2RC1.tar.gz

winGRASS binaries:
  http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/native/

To get the RC1 source code from SVN:
 svn checkout https://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20111010_grass_6_4_2RC1/

An announcement has been drafted at
 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.4.2RC1-News

Key improvements of the GRASS 6.4.2 release include enhanced portability for MS-Windows (native support), major fixes for the new wxPython based portable graphical interface, and new functionality (new network tools, zonal support for univariate statistics, image processing improvements, GRASS Python Library extensions, an embedded interactive Python Shell, an experimental Graphical Modeler, and new Cartographic Composer front-end to ps.map).

Release candidate management at
 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass6Planning

Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.

Thanks to all contributors!

GRASS GIS 6.4.1 released
12 April 2011
http://grass.osgeo.org

We are pleased to announce that the new stable version GRASS 6.4.1 has been released. This release fixes some bugs discovered in the GRASS 6.4.0 source code and a few new features (over 560 updates to the source code with respect to 6.4.0 have been added). As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support.

GRASS 6.4 brings a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. Our new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) is debuted, Python is now a fully supported scripting language, and for the first time since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS runs natively also on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows.

GRASS differs from many other GIS software packages used in the academic and professional worlds 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. The source code is also freely available, allowing for immediate customization, examination of the underlying algorithms, addition of new features, and faster patching of bugs.

Full story at http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass641.html


About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) providing powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS has now been translated into twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats.

A "GRASS Community Sprint" will take place in May in Prague, Czech Republic directly following the upcoming Geoinformatics FCE CTU 2011 conference. This GRASS Community Sprint is a great occasion for you to support the development by actively contributing to the source code, the manuals or likewise. It is a get together for GRASS project members and supporters to make decisions and tackle larger problems. For this meeting, we welcome people committed to improving the GRASS GIS project. This includes developers, documenters, bug reporters, translators and others.

Timing and Duration:

Friday, May 20, 2011 (day of arrival) - Wednesday, May 25, 2011

• Friday is day of arrival - first meeting in the evening (after the conference) to define the agenda
• Saturday to Tuesday full day
• Wednesday is the last day