[GRASS-user] mossy grass seeds

GRASS GRASS user
1

Hi,

Inspired by Benjamin's rather nice OS/archaeology presentation[1] I was
reading a piece[2] by Carl Reed (CTO of the OGC) about his work on MOSS
GIS from the late 70s - early 80s while at the US FWS. MOSS was a vector
GIS [and Carl claims the first interactive user GIS] & early GRASS
[several years later, but there was some overlap] was primarily a raster
GIS so I don't think there would be much code overlap*. None the less,
the two names demonstrate a clear influence in the tradition of pine/elm,
pico/nano, less/more and certain ideas+terminology seem to be inherited
such as "mapsets".

[1] ftp://88.208.250.116/ducke-frankfurt-foss-gis-arch.pdf
[2] http://www.scribd.com/cnreed
[*] but v.out.moss in GRASS 5 was written by MOSS developers, maybe some
    SDTS stuff too?

just curious: was "GRASS" just cheeky naming by a competing US Gov't GIS
team or was there tangled roots in the early days?

Hamish

2

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com> wrote:
...

just curious: was "GRASS" just cheeky naming by a competing US Gov't GIS
team or was there tangled roots in the early days?

Here are some pointers:

http://grass.osgeo.org/devel/grasshist.html
* GRASS History I: Lynn Van Warren recalls the design of Fort Hood GIS
  software design that lead to GRASS development
* GRASS History II: GRASS Roots by Jim Westervelt (In Proc. Free/Libre
  and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics: GIS-GRASS Users
  Conference 2004, Sept. 12-14, Bangkok, Thailand, 2004)
* GRASS History III: Early GRASS Community Views on FOSS by
  Jim Westervelt (Keynote at FOSS4G2006, 11-15 September 2006,
   Lausanne, Switzerland)

cheers
Markus

3

On 16/02/09 08:52, Markus Neteler wrote:

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com> wrote:
...

just curious: was "GRASS" just cheeky naming by a competing US Gov't GIS
team or was there tangled roots in the early days?

Here are some pointers:

* GRASS History II: GRASS Roots by Jim Westervelt (In Proc. Free/Libre
  and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics: GIS-GRASS Users
  Conference 2004, Sept. 12-14, Bangkok, Thailand, 2004)

And here it is:

"With a swelling of new customers, the need to maintain the software on multiple computers running at multiple sites, we packaged our 20 programs and called the turn-key solution GRASS the Geographic Resource Analysis Support System. The name continued a series of GIS names
based on plants: SAGE, a DOS-based GIS, and MOSS (Mapping Overlay Statistical System), developed by The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)."

So, yes same as elm/pine etc.

Moritz