aboutus(1)		      Grass User's Manual		    aboutus(1)



GGRRAASSSS DDeevveellooppmmeenntt TTeeaamm



       IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn

       The GRASS Development Team is pleased to announce this new home for the
       open source  Geographic	Resources  Analysis  Support  System  (GRASS).
       GRASS  has been under continual development since 1982 and has involved
       a large number of federal US agencies, universities, and private compa-
       nies.   The core components of GRASS and the management of the integra-
       tion of the efforts into GRASS releases were accomplished by  the  Con-
       struction  Engineering  Resesarch Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Illi-
       nois.  CERL completed the last combined release of GRASS as version 4.1
       in  1992 and provided updates and patches to this release through 1995.
       It has been estimated that several million dollars  of  GRASS  software
       development efforts across the government have been completed since the
       4.1 release. Since 1997 GRASS is developed by a consortium of worldwide
       researcher and programmers at universities and private companies. GRASS
       GIS is released under GNU General Public License.


       PPllaannss

       We have several goals for the release of GRASS including:

		     _W_e _h_a_v_e _r_e_l_e_a_s_e_d _G_R_A_S_S _v_e_r_s_i_o_n _4_._2_._x GRASS 4.2.x consists
		     of  the  GRASS  4.1  engine with the addition of many new
		     programs that have been submitted by the user  community.



		     _R_e_v_a_m_p_e_d _d_o_c_u_m_e_n_t_a_t_i_o_n_.  In keeping with the tradition of
		     making GRASS available to the greatest audience possible,
		     are releasing new versions of the documentation. The cur-
		     rent Users, Programmers, and Installation Guides are cur-
		     rently available in Adobe PDF format.



		     _T_h_e  _r_e_l_e_a_s_e  _o_f _v_e_r_s_i_o_n _5_._0_.  Major changes to this ver-
		     sion includes support for floating-point numbers and  the
		     separation  of  0 and null.  This version of GRASS gener-
		     ates DIFFERENT grass format files due to the floating and
		     null support.


       CCuurrrreenntt SSttaattuuss

       As of December 1997, we have released GRASS 4.2 to the public.  GRASS 5
       has been released under GPL license in Oktober 1999 and already	under-
       gone several beta releases towards GRASS 5.0stable.


       TThhee FFuuttuurree ooff GGRRAASSSS

       Our  main  goal	is to keep GRASS alive and prospering and available to
       the user community.  We hope that the continued interest in GRASS  will
       result in its further development and enhancement.


	RReesseeaarrcchheerrss


       List of authors Other cooperating scientists, groups, and agencies


       GGRRAASSSS DDeevveellooppmmeenntt TTeeaamm


       AAddddrreessss::

       GRASS Development Team

       U.S. Headquarters (GRASS 4 coordination)

       Center for Applied Geographic and Spatial Research

       Baylor University

       PPhhoonnee:: (254) 710-2361

       eemmaaiill:: grass@baylor.edu

       P.O. Box 97354 Waco, TX 76798

       European Headquarters (GRASS 5 coordination)

       Institute of Physical Geography-Landscape Ecology

       University of Hannover

       Schneiderberg 50

       30167 Hannover

       Germany


       _L_a_s_t _c_h_a_n_g_e_d_: _$_D_a_t_e_: _2_0_0_2_/_0_1_/_2_5 _0_5_:_4_5_:_3_2 _$



GRASS 5.0							    aboutus(1)
