GRASS Geographic Information System now under GPL

Spatialy Challenged writes "The GRASS Geographic Information System (originally developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers) is actively being developed and has now been released under the GPL. GRASS has a good core architecture, but is missing the interoperability and GUI features of commercial desktop GIS. I would sure like to see this software evolve into a KDE/Gnome GUI plus OpenGIS CORBA/SQL/COM interoperability. I'm sure it has the potential to blow the socks off of the big commercial names. "

Comments

Re:U.S.Code, Title 17, Section 105 (short and swee

[mouseman]

The feds can own copyrights only by transfer.

True.

Too often, they get around this by hiring some company to do the work and let them profit off the copyrights in addition to paying them for the work.

Unfortunately, that does happen. Though, based on my reading of the copyright law, I believe the practice of using copyright transfers to get around the requirement that government works be PD is expressly forbidden. However, IANAL.

The idea behind the law should be obvious: stuff developed with public money should be free for unrestricted use by the public who paid for it.

That is the opinion I most often hear, but I don't think that's the reason government works are PD. For example, as you pointed out, works developed by private contractors are generally owned by those contractors, even when the development was paid for entirely out of taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, even if the government owns a copyright, the work is still public property, in the same sense that government-owned streets or buildings are public property. You don't have "unrestricted use" of the streets, even though you paid for them, because the interests of the public at large are best served by imposing some restrictions.

Rather, I think the real reason government works aren't copyrighted is that there's no reason for them to be. The purpose of copyrights is to promote the development of valuable works for public consumption, by giving the creators the oportunity to profit from selling copies of the works, and thus an incentive to develop them. Works developed by the government are already developed specifically for the public good (at least in theory), so there's no need for an additional profit motive.

Of course, that doesn't explain government-owned patents.

I hate to see this stuff disappearing from the public domain into the chains of the GPL.

I think you're confused here. If something is in the public domain, it cannot disappear from the public domain unless all copies disappear. Furthermore, government agencies are required to make their (non-classified, PD) products available to the public at a reasonable fee (to cover costs), so just because government-developed software is released under the GPL doesn't mean you can't obtain a PD version.

However, anyone can take that PD software, make some trivial changes, copyright it and release the result as proprietary, GPL, or whatever.

I actually think in many ways the GPL serves the public better than releasing it PD. Look at the TIGER/LINE data that Bruce Parens released under the GPL. Before that, there were dozens and dozens of companies taking that data (acquired at considerable public expense), making proprietary modifications and reselling it. All perfectly legitimate, but also wasteful, since anyone who wanted commercial-quality maps that weren't subject to someone else's copyright would have to go back to the PD version and duplicate the work that has been done dozens of times before. On the other hand, any improvements made the the GPL'ed version will be free to everyone, so no one needs to reinvent the wheel.

Needs to be component-ized

[hey!]

From what I can see, most places that get GIS's end up either pouring tons of resources into them for doubtful return, or end up occaisionally playing with them, producing one or two interesting maps and then falling by the wayside.

The key I think to give the average user the ability to use spatial analysis is to develop custom built applications that support specific tasks and analyses. I'm doing that right now in the public health sector. The problem is the licesnsing is a bear. The vendors don't want it to be too easy to develop applications with GIS functionality because it affects there bread and butter business. One vendor requires you buy licenses in blocks of 40, for example.

The other thing that would be nice is if the government would start making the datasets we paid good tax money for available for reasonable fees. The fact that people take them and simply resell them at lower prices (which presumably is fair market price) means that the government's revenues are not maximized for these resources.

Re:Needs to be component-ized

[GPSguy]

As things stand now, implementing a GIS is non-trivial. You've got to be well-trained in the software, knowledgable in databases, and have a clue about geodesy. Without these, and other key components, you have a program that ends up making maps which are then of questionable utility.

I firmly agree with paragraph 2, however. I foresee the day when the "GIS Industry" fades away save for the academics teaching it, and they're going to fade to obscurity only a bit more slowly. Spatial representation of data is a fairly natural method of analysis and display. That it's not been widely implemented so far has, as much as anything, been the result of database limitations... and more in theory than applicaiton implementations. Indeed, I'm willing to bet that within 10 years, perhaps less, the "big names" in GIS software in the industrial markey will be looking at the Microsofts, Corels, Applixes, and other suite makers, and wondering how the market got there.

As for datasets: yes, our money paid for their development. A lot of them are available for free, or the cost of duplication. You've got to know where to get them... In Texas, the Texas Natural Resources Information Service (TNRIS: http://www.tnris.state.tx.us) has a lot of geodata for the whole state available for download... for free. Storage limitations preclude putting ALL of the data out that way, but they're working on that, and the cost of distribution for non-downloadable data is restricted by state law to the costs of duplication, media and delivery.

Landsat-7 data are available from USGS now for about 1/2 the cost of scenes from previous birds. USGS is developing a warehouse of older SPOT-Image data that they're trying to make available for duplication costs only.

SO: There's a lot out on that front. You have to look, I have to scout out tidbits at the meetings. Now: Can someone tell me why the DoD National Imagery and Mapping Agency's Level 1 (10m) Digital Terrain Elevation Models (DTEDs) are classified for the Continental US? Because of that, I can't get the new NGS densifications of height vs. local gravity in Geoid99!

GRASS Mentioned in Linux Journal back issues

[edgy]

I think they had a long article in Linux Journal about using GRASS under Linux instead of the commercial alternatives, and even in the state that it is in currently, it saved them a lot of money and allowed them to use scripts and tools like Tk and others to be able to automate things to allow them to process a lot more data a lot more quickly.

The project was completed tens of thousands of dollars under budget and they experienced none of the problems they used to see with other systems.

This is a good thing. They spoke very highly of GRASS and its potential. I'm not in the field at all, but this is another victory for free software.

Shades of the French Senators story?

[timothy]

This story reminds me a little bit about the French senators who want computer programming done for France to be open sourced -- it demonstrates the value that can be salvaged from tax money that's already been spent.

Is there a good reason that it could not simply be a standard clause in the contracts surrounding comptuer programming done for any government agency that the result must be reusable, barring previous conflicting licensing terms? There are all sorts of other standards imposed on nearly every government contract, and this is one that might actually add some value.

Remember, the only way the government buys something is with money it's already taken from you for your benefit, or with money it promises it will take from you later. (Also for your benefit.)

cheers,

timothy