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\title{Interview with Radim Blazek}
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\textbf{Radim Blazek  is ......}

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\textit{\textbf{ Welcome to the first volume of GRASS-News  in 2006. Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself, what is your profession, where do you live, which OS, GRASS version are you using etc?}}

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 I live in Trento (Dolomites) but I was born in Czech Republic. GIS is my profession. I do all my GIS work on desktop exclusively with GRASS and Quantum GIS. I am using the latest CVS HEAD version of GRASS also for regular work. Everything running on Linux (Mandrake and RedHat).

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\textit{\textbf{ Is there a certain project or topic you are working at?}} 

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 The two main projects I am involved in are MITRIS (traffic safety) and UXB (unexploded bombs). Regarding the UXB project, approximately 37000 bombs were dropped on 70km of Adige valley in Trento province area during the WWII.About 10 \% of those bombs did not explode, it is worth to know  where the unexploded bombs are approximately located - excellent task for GIS.


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   \caption{Radim Blazek}
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\textit{\textbf{ Which / when was your first contact with GRASS?}}

 When I installed Linux for the first time (1997-1998) I found GIS-HOWTO which was in fact GRASS-HOWTO. GIS was my profession so I tried it. It was exciting to get a raster map drawn on the monitor. It was great adventure. Not really for ordinary people.


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\textit{\textbf{ Did you use GIS/RS software before? Commercial, Open Source? Why did you decide to stick with GRASS?}}

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 I was using proprietary GIS applications at work when I found out about GRASS - mostly MGE (Intergaph), Microstation and ArcView. I decided to stay with GRASS due to the lack of other complete open source GIS. There are thousands of various GIS utilities but not another full featured open source GIS. 

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 \textit{\textbf{ But what did you make to swap to GRASS, any feature which you needed or "just" Open Source philosophy?}}

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 The key features missing in the proprietary applications were easy scripting/automation and raster analysis. But the philosophy was also important. It helped me to get over all those difficulties with GRASS and Linux.

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\textit{\textbf{ Is there a link between your profession/hobby and Open Source, especially GRASS?}}

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 I am using GRASS for my work and I am developing GRASS to make my work more efficient. In my opinion, that is optimal motivation for open source development . It is often seen as a wrong approach. That can be true, it is easy to forget about users and we often tend to forget about them in GRASS. Fortunately my colleagues are also using GRASS so I have an effective feedback. I radically changed my opinion about user interface during few last years and I believe that the new user interface implemented in Quantum GIS is really efficient and user friendly. 
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 \textit{\textbf{ That is true but what do you think about the R core team approach who supports the command line with the argument that this forces the user to think twice before executing any command?}}

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 I don't want to force anybody to do something he does not like to do. The key is not how many GRASS users will think about what they are doing but if GRASS will have any users at all. 

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\textit{\textbf{ What do you think is great about GRASS and which feature is missing?}}

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 I consider a good feature the tight integration of vectors and rasters. I experienced the situation when both vectors and rasters have to be used at the same time in many projects.

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I don't think that GRASS is missing any important feature which could prevent users from using it in daily work. However, there are many details which make the usage of GRASS less efficient with respect to other GIS packages. I could write the whole GRASS Newsletter about that. I have few pages of TODOs.

In terms of vectors I would say that the biggest issues are scalability (topology and spatial index), interoperability (direct access to OGR data sources without v.external) and performance (spatial operations).

Rasters have been stagnating since the floating point format was added. GRASS people are used to saying that GRASS is very good in rasters. Unfortunately that's not true any more. Among the missing features I would name for example wavelet compression, direct access to GDAL data sources (without conversion), 1 bit format or 'photo' colortable. The most important is to recognise that the things valued in 1995 are not sufficient in 2006. If we just keep saying that rasters in GRASS are the best we will never move forward.

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 \textit{\textbf{ If you look at OSSIM or SAGA GIS many missing features are already implemented in Open Source programs. Isn't there a possibility to implement these features in GRASS and increase the interactions between these packages e.g. via OSGF?}}

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 To implement in GRASS? What do you mean? Of course it is possible to use other packages instead of implementing new features in GRASS but that means to change GRASS project status to 'controlled dead'.

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\textit{\textbf{ How long have you been engaged in Open Source/GRASS development?}}

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 Since 1999 I think. I sent my first patch to Baylor in the autumn of 1999. I have never got any response. At the beginning I had a wrong impression that they are really doing something on Baylor. If I recall well, it was patch a for vector areas in ps.map. I was often surprised that GRASS cannot do such basic tasks. My contributions have always been driven by concrete needs.

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\textit{\textbf{ What is your focus in the development of GRASS?}}

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 I have been working especially on vectors in last years. The biggest weakness of GRASS was the poor vector support. Nowadays I am more focused on graphical user interface implemented as plugin for Quantum GIS. Recently I have been working also on GRASS port for Windows. I believe that GRASS is at present complete RS/GIS package which can be used for most of tasks. The only thing which was missing was the user interface for Windows. I have been working towards this direction and we are really close to the release of GRASS running natively on Windows (without Cygwin) in a very nice, user friendly and effective interface. This can seem to be of little interest to experienced GRASS users but it is obvious that development sources depend on user base size. Also Linux fans can benefit from Windows port of GRASS.

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 \textit{\textbf{ How can Linux users benefit from a Windows port? By an increased user community or more developers?}}

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 More users mean more sources for the project in general.

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\textit{\textbf{ What are your GRASS plans for the future?}}

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 We don't have sources for a long term planning. All the 'road maps' failed because there was nobody willing to do the work projected by others. The most important for me is to get Quantum GIS with GRASS running smoothly on main platforms.

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\textit{\textbf{ What might be the reason that people don't want to accomplish work projected by others. It works if you look at other projects. What is the difference between them and GRASS?}}

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 In which projects it works?

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\textit{\textbf{ Why are you dedicating so much time into GRASS? Philosophy, profession?}}

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 Stupidity?

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\textit{\textbf{ What would be in your opinion a major break-through for GRASS?}}

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 Quantum GIS 0.8 with GRASS plugin for Windows. We must recognise reality. Linux plus Mac have around 2-5 \% share on desktop. Windows flavours have 90 \% share on desktop and Cygwin cannot be taken seriously. The potential GRASS user base will increase 10 times with the release of Quantum GIS and GRASS for Windows.

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 \textit{\textbf{You released a preview of it already, was there any feed-back so far? }}

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Yes, people regularly download and test the preview, but I think that majority of potential users simply does not know about that yet. The typical GIS user does not read GRASS/QGIS mailing lists. We will have to let them know about it.


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\textit{\textbf{Thanks for the interview and all the best for your \textit{GRASS} engagement!}}


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