GRASS History

Historical Notes

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) GRASS has been under continuous development since 1982 and has involved a large number of federal US agencies, universities, and private companies. The core components of GRASS and the management of the integration efforts into GRASS releases were accomplished by the U.S. Army - Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA-CERL) in Champaign, Illinois. USA-CERL completed its last release of GRASS as version 4.1 in 1992, and provided five updates and patches to this release through 1995. USA-CERL also wrote the core components of the GRASS 5.0 floating point version.

Later on, GRASS development was taken over in academia in 1997 after a period of uncertainty. Since then the international GRASS Development Team manages the source code.

GRASS Credits

From "GRASS Mini-HOWTO": In the early 1980s the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA/CERL) in Champaign, Illinois, began to explore the possibilities of using Geographic Information Systems to conduct environmental research, assessments, monitoring and management of lands under the stewardship of the U. S. Department of Defense. Part of the motivation for this action was new responsibility for the environment encoded into the National Environmental Policy Act of the late 1970s.
Bill Goran of USA/CERL conducted a survey of available GISs, assuming that he could find several systems capable of environmental analysis, from which he could select one or more to recommend for use by CERL and perhaps others in the Department of Defense. However, he was surprised to find no GIS that satisfied his needs. What started as a selection process turned into a design exercise for his own GIS development program.
USA/CERL hired several programmers, and began by writing a hybrid raster-vector GIS for the VAX UNIX environment. This made the team one of the first to seriously develop GIS for UNIX. Though they still faced challenges with different versions of UNIX, they developed procedures of coding in ANSI standard UNIX, avoiding "tweaking" the code toward any particular vendor-specific flavor of UNIX.

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)

In 1997, development was taken over by Baylor University (Waco, Texas) for a period, then it migrated to University of Hannover (Germany) where the first European GRASS Web site was opened in 1998. The GRASS Development Team grew into a multi-national team consisting of developers at numerous locations. In 2001, the GRASS Web site was moved to ITC-irst (Trento, Italy).

In February 2006, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) has been created to support and promote worldwide use and collaborative development of Open Source geospatial technologies and data. It includes GRASS as one of its founding projects. Since 2008, the GRASS infrastructure (Web-site, mailing lists, bugtracker) runs at OSGeo.

GRASS GIS Website evolution: 1997-2003

In September 2006, the GRASS Project Steering Commitee was formed which is responsible for the overall management of the project. The PSC is especially responsible for granting SVN write access.

GRASS releases

See also: Detailed GRASS releases page

1982 Fort Hood Information System (FHIS) (Vax 11/780): Goran, W.D., Dvorak, W.E., Van Warren, L. and Webster, R.D., 1983, Fort Hood Geographic Information System: Pilot System Development and User Instructions, Technical Report N-154, USA Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, Champaign, IL.
1983 Installation Geographic Information System (IGIS) (SUN-1 Microcomputer)
1984 GRASS (SUN-1 and Masscomp)
1985 GRASS 1.0, GRASSnet established [GRASShopper archive 1991-95, GRASSList archive 1991-today]
1986 GRASS 1.1; receives "Exemplary Systems in Government Award" from URISA
1987 GRASS 2.0; first issue of GRASSClippings 1992 + GRASSClippings 1993, GRASS video narrated by William Shatner (Captain Kirk of Star Trek)
1988 GRASS 3.0; Army R&D Achievement Award (Webster, Goran, Shapiro, Westervelt)
1991 GRASS 4.0; released through Internet - popularity grows with universities, business and government agencies [mirror of moon.cecer.army.mil: grass/ and incoming/].
1993 GRASS 4.1; Federal Lab Consortium - Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer
1995 GRASS 4.1.5 port to Linux: Yung-Tsung Kang, Michigan State University
2/1996 USA-CERL no longer support GRASS announcement
1997 GRASS 4.2 Baylor University - The first "GRASS Research Group" takes control of GRASS Development from USACERL.

This first new release in 4 years adds numerous programs. Popularity increases with academic community.

1998 GRASS 4.2.1 Markus Neteler, Germany
26. October 1999 GRASS 5.0 released under GNU GPL (Baylor University and Markus Neteler)
5. September 2002 GRASS 5.0.0 stable released (GRASS Development team lead by Markus Neteler at ITC-irst, Trento, Italy)
6. November 2003 GRASS 5.0.3 stable released (GRASS Development team lead by Markus Neteler at ITC-irst, Trento, Italy), further development of release brach shifted to 5.3.x series (see Development Roadmap).

GRASS 4.2.1 development

- started 1998 by Markus Neteler in Germany with worldwide contributions
- more than 230 improvements and bugfixes
- 50 new modules added
- graphical user interface "TclTkGRASS" added (Jacques Bouchard)
[- code cleanup from leftover files (more than 1000)]
1999 GRASS Development Team is formed - Markus Neteler and Bruce Byars coordinate an effort to bring all GRASS development and research into a single group of international scientists.

GRASS 4.3 development

1999 GRASS 4.3 is released by the GRASS Development Team. The last release of non-floating point GRASS, based on the GRASS 4.2 and 4.2.1 code.

GRASS 5.* development

1995 Unofficial GRASS 5.0 version from USA-CERL
1999 GRASS 5.0 is released under GNU GPL by the GRASS Development Team. The first major change in years, this version incorporates floating point calculations and NULL support into GRASS raster engine.
29 Dec 1999 GRASS 5.0 CVS server established
1/2001 Request Tracker (RT) established for bug tracking
2001 GRASS Europe pages moved from University of Hannover, Germany to ITC-irst, Italy: http://grass.itc.it/
5. September 2002 GRASS 5.0.0 stable released (GRASS Development team lead by Markus Neteler at ITC-irst, Trento, Italy)
2002 GRASS 5.1 started at ITC-irst, Trento, Italy
November 2003 GRASS 5.0.x becomes a "critical bug fix only" version, new development streams started (see Development Roadmap).
May 2004 GRASS 5.3.x becomes a "critical bug fix only" version, new development streams started (see Development Roadmap).
June 2004 GRASS 5.7.0 release.

GRASS 6.* development

1/2005 GRASS 6.0.0beta1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
2/2005 GRASS 6.0.0beta2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
3/2005 GRASS 6.0.0 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
8/2005 GRASS 6.0.1RC1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
8/2005 GRASS 6.0.1RC2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
22 Aug. 2005 GRASS 6.0.1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
29 Dec. 2005 GRASS 6.0.2RC1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
3 Jan. 2006 GRASS 6.0.2RC2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
3 Jan. 2006 GRASS 6.0.2RC3 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
6 Jan. 2006 GRASS 6.0.2RC4 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
22 Feb. 2006 GRASS 6.0.2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
14 July 2006 GRASS 6.1.0beta1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
2 Aug. 2006 GRASS 6.1.0RC1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
11 Aug. 2006 GRASS 6.1.0 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
28 Aug. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0beta1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
30 Aug. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0beta2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
18 Sep. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0beta3 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
26 Sep. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0RC1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
6 Oct. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0RC2 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
24 Oct. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0RC3 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
31 Oct. 2006 GRASS 6.2.0 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
6 Dec. 2006 GRASS 6.2.1RC1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
12 Dec. 2006 GRASS 6.2.1 version from ITC-irst/GRASS Development Team
29 May 2007 GRASS 6.2.2RC1 version from FBK-irst (formerly ITC-irst)/GRASS Development Team
16 June 2007 GRASS 6.2.2 version from FBK-irst (formerly ITC-irst)/GRASS Development Team
26 June 2007 GRASS 5.4.1 version from GRASS Development Team
21 Oct 2007 GRASS 6.2.3RC1 version from GRASS Development Team
24 Oct 2007 GRASS 6.3.0RC1 version from GRASS Development Team
20 Nov 2007 GRASS 6.3.0RC2 version from GRASS Development Team
27 Nov 2007 GRASS 6.2.3 version from GRASS Development Team
30 Nov 2007 GRASS 6.3.0RC3 version from GRASS Development Team
9 Jan 2008 GRASS 6.3.0RC4 version from GRASS Development Team
19 Feb 2008 GRASS 6.3.0RC5 version from GRASS Development Team
21 Mar 2008 GRASS 6.3.0RC6 version from GRASS Development Team
23 Apr 2008 GRASS 6.3.0 version from GRASS Development Team
23 Dec 2008 GRASS 6.4.0RC1 version from GRASS Development Team
12 Jan 2009 GRASS 6.4.0RC2 version from GRASS Development Team
26 Jan 2009 GRASS 6.4.0RC3 version from GRASS Development Team
12 Apr 2009 GRASS 6.4.0RC4 version from GRASS Development Team
9 June 2009 GRASS 6.4.0RC5 version from GRASS Development Team
20 March 2010 GRASS 6.4.0RC6 version from GRASS Development Team
27 August 2010 GRASS 6.4.0RC7 version from GRASS Development Team
3 September 2010 GRASS 6.4.0 version from GRASS Development Team
3 January 2011 GRASS 6.4.1RC1 version from GRASS Development Team
17 March 2011 GRASS 6.4.1RC2 version from GRASS Development Team
12 April 2011 GRASS 6.4.1 version from GRASS Development Team
10 October 2011 GRASS 6.4.2RC1 version from GRASS Development Team
15 November 2011 GRASS 6.4.2RC2 version from GRASS Development Team
12 January 2012 GRASS 6.4.2RC3 version from GRASS Development Team
19 February 2012 GRASS 6.4.2 version from GRASS Development Team
24 October 2012 GRASS 6.4.3RC1 version from GRASS Development Team

GRASS 7.* development

27 April 2008 GRASS 7 development begun

Hosting agencies for the GRASS conferences:

1 (1985) Fort Hood, Texas
2 (1986) Fort Lewis, Washington
3 (1987) National Space Technology Lab, Stennis Space Center,
4 (1988) Champaign. USA CERL
5 (1989) Alexandria, Va. Soil Conservation Service
6 (1990) UC Berkeley
7 (1992) Denver, National Park Service
8 (1993) Reston, Va. USGS, SCS, FBI
(1994) Paris, France (5TH European GRASS Users Meeting)
9th Annual GRASS GIS User's Conference and Exhibition (Sponsered by the Open GIS Foundation, Hosted by the Soil Conservation Service, March 13-18,'94 Reston Virginia)
(2000) 1. Italian GRASS Meeting at Como, Italy
(2001) 2. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Trento, Italy, February 1-2 2001, Web site
(2001) 1. German GRASS Meeting at University of Mainz
(2002) 3. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Trieste, Italy
(2002) Open Source Free Software GIS - GRASS users conference 2002, Trento, Italy, 11-13 September 2002, Web site
(2003) 4. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Firenze, Italy, 13-14 Feb 2003, Web site
(2004) 5. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Padova, Italy, Web site
(2004) Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics: GIS-GRASS User Conference 2004, Bangkok, Thailand, Sept 12-14, 2004, Web site
(2005) 6. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Rome, Italy, Web site
(2006) 7. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Genova, Italy, Web site
(2006) FOSS4G 2006 - Open Source Geospatial Communities JOINT CONFERENCE - September 12-15 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland

(2007) 8. Italian GRASS Meeting at University of Palermo, Italy, Web site

(2007) FOSS4G 2007 - Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSSG4) Conference - September 24-27 2007, Victoria, Canada

Many more conferences.... (to be added)