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><A
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>3. A Brief History of GRASS</A
></H1
><P
> 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.
</P
><P
> 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.
</P
><P
> 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.
</P
><P
> GRASS developed a programming style characterized by:
</P
><P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
> Use of UNIX libraries where possible, plus the creation of GRASS
libraries for repeated GIS-specific acts such as opening raster
files that might be compressed (by run-length encoding) or not.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The ability to handle both major GIS data types: raster and vector.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The favoring of raster data processing, as scientific analysis was
easier to encode with raster (than for vector) data models.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The ability to handle raster grids of mixed grid sizes in the same
data base. This was a departure from raster's image processing
tradition of requiring identical (and perfectly registered) grid
cell arrays in each and every data layer.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The ability to handle raster grids with different areas of
coverage. Again, this was a departure from raster tradition of
having all grids be identical in geographic coverage.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The ability to run-length encode raster data files, in order to
greatly reduce file sizes of most files.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The separate structure of reclassification files. Such files
merely contained a look-up table noting the previous and new
classes. This is MUCH more compact than replicating the original
grid with different numerical values. A reclassified file of a
100x100 km square area of 10 metre grid cells would be a few
hundred bytes, rather than 100 megabytes of uncompressed 8-bit
raster data.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> The acceptance of de-facto standard data models. While competitors
created cumbersome (and in many cases secretive) data formats,
GRASS accepted the de-facto standard Digital Line Graph vector
format and unheaded binary raster grid format. GRASS later
abandoned DLG as its internal vector file format, and let its
raster format evolve. However, DLG and the unheaded binary raster
grid are still routinely handled formats for GRASS, and its new
formats are as open as its previous ones.
</P
></LI
><LI
><P
> GRASS code was managed in several directories. Initial
contributions were placed in the src.contrib directory. More solid
code was moved to the src.alpha directory. After remaining in the
src.alpha for one full release cycle, the code, with resultant bug
fixes, moved to the most honorable level, the src directory.
</P
></LI
></UL
><P
>
GRASS was overseen by three levels of oversight committees. USA/CERL
kept the ultimate responsibility for GRASS. It implemented most GRASS
development, and carried out the day-to-day management of GRASS testing
and release. The GRASS Interagency Steering Committee (GIASC),
comprised of other Federal agencies, met semi-annually to review
development progress, and evaluate future directions for GRASS.
(Academic and commercial participants in GRASS also attended GIASC
meetings; only part of each meeting was "Federal-Agencies-only." GRASS
eventually became nominally and officially a "product" of the GIASC,
though everyone recognized USA/CERL's leadership role. The GRASS
Military Steering Committee met periodically to review the progress of
GRASS in serving its original intent: meeting the Department of
Defense's needs to evaluate and manage the environment of military
lands.
</P
><P
> The public interacted with CERL and GIASC through USA/CERL's GRASS
Information Center. GRASS Beta testing was very widespread, and quite
intensive for the leading users of GRASS. Several leading users, such
as the National Park Service and the Soil Conservation Service, selected
GRASS as its prime or only GIS. They made significant commitments to
enhance and test GRASS, yet considered this investment well worth their
while. They said that they had more influence over the direction of
GRASS than they would over any known alternative system. They also felt
that, despite their major efforts and expenses in supporting GRASS, they
had a bargain in relevant power for the dollar.
</P
><P
> Several universities adopted GRASS as an important training and research
environment. Many conducted short-courses for the public, in addition
to using GRASS in their own curricula. Examples of such leading
academic users of GRASS are Central Washington University, The
University of Arkansas, Texas A & M University, The University of
California at Berkeley, and Rutgers University.
</P
><P
> Though GRASS received some criticism (some say) for being so good and so
public, it was also reputedly borrowed from liberally by some developers
of other systems. Though the first group might have viewed it as unfair
competition, the second group may have noted that it was not copyright,
and was a valuable testbed for GIS concepts. GRASS received an award
from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) for
quality software in 1988.
</P
><P
> As CERL and GRASS evolved through the late 1980s and early 1990s, CERL
attempted to cut overhead costs associated with supporting the public
domain version. It created and initially funded the Open GRASS
Foundation, in cooperation with several of the leading users of GRASS.
The Open GRASS Foundation has since evolved into the Open GIS
Consortium, which is aiming for more thorough interoperability at the
data and user interface level, but appears not to be taking advantage of
the major open GIS testbed (GRASS).
</P
><P
> In 1996 USA/CERL, just before beginning the beta testing for GRASS
version 5.0, announced that it was formally withdrawing support to the
public. USA/CERL announced agreements with several commercial GISs, and
agreed to provide encouragement to commercialization of GRASS. One
result of this is
<A
HREF="http://www.las.com/grassland/"
TARGET="_top"
><I
CLASS="CITETITLE"
>GRASSLANDS</I
></A
>,
a commercial adaptation of much of GRASS. Another result is a migration of
several former GRASS users to COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) GISs.
However, GRASS' anonymous ftp site contains many enhancements to the
last full version 4.1 release of GRASS. Many organizations still use
GRASS feeling that, despite the lack of a major release in five years,
GRASS still leads the pack in many areas.
</P
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