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1 Introduction

Today, Free Software has become a synonym for innovation and progress. Free use, modification, and distribution of the programs and their open source codes are guaranteed due to the support of free idea exchange between users and developers. This means a steady, worldwide organized and demand-oriented advancement in short periods of time for the Geographical Information System GRASS GIS.

This document offers a short introduction in the Geographical Information System GRASS. It extends the known German and English literature ((5),(6)) by aspects of the use and the installation of GRASS 6.0. In addition, modified material for using the latest GRASS developments is therefore handed out from the date of publication.

Before reading this script we want to introduce you a little insight and view in the future of GRASS GIS by the help of a Roadmap (Fig. 1) . It shows the directions in which GRASS development has been moved since 2001 and will move in the future.

Figure 1: Roadmap of the GRASS development since 2001 (Status 1/2005)