History
GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) 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 integration of efforts into GRASS releases was originally directed by the U.S. Army - Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA-CERL), a branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 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.
The development of GRASS was started by the USA-CERL to meet the need of the United States military for software for land management and environmental planning. A key motivation was the National Environmental Policy Act. The development platform was UNIX running on VAX hardware. During 1982 through 1995, USA-CERL led the development of GRASS, with the involvement of numerous others, including universities and other federal agencies. USA-CERL officially ceased its involvement in GRASS after release 4.1 (1995), though development had been limited to minor patches since 1993. A group formed at Baylor University to take over the software, releasing GRASS 4.2. Around this period, a port of the software to Linux was made. In 1998, Markus Neteler, the current project leader, announced the release of GRASS 4.2.1, which offered major improvements including a new graphical user interface. In October 1999, the license of the originally public-domain GRASS software was changed to the GNU GPL in version 5.0.
Subsequently, GRASS has evolved into a powerful software suite with a wide range of applications in many different areas of scientific research and engineering. For example, GRASS is used for estimating potential solar photovoltaic yield with r.sun. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as many governmental agencies including NASA, NOAA, USDA, DLR, CSIRO, the National Park Service, the U.S. Census Bureau, USGS, and many environmental consulting companies.
As of 2011 GRASS development is split into a stable branch (6.4), a development branch (6.5), and an experimental branch (7.0). The stable branch is recommended for most users, while the 6.5/7.0 branch operates as a testbed for new features.
Read more about this topic: GRASS GIS
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