[Gramps-devel] A Year in Review

[Don Allingham]

As the year winds down, I thought it might be nice to take a look back
at the year the GRAMPS project had. Things just kind of creep up on you,
and you tend to forget the progress that was made.

Here are some of the major events that occurred this year:

* Release of GRAMPS 2.0. This marked a major step forward for the
  project introducing many new advanced features, including the
  new database backend.

* New web sites. We moved from our basic web page at SourceForge
  to a set of four sites with our own domain. These sites include:

   http://gramps-project.org - the new home of GRAMPS on the web
   http://developers.gramps-project.org - the wiki site for development
       issues
   http://blog.gramps-project.org - GRAMPS very own blog site. This is
       a great place to get caught up on the thoughts of the
       development team.
   http://library.gramps-project.org - a site where GRAMPS users' can
       can post their GRAMPS generated web sites free of charge.
   
* Release of the Linux Genealogy Live CD. Based of the Ubuntu Live CD,
  this allows Windows and other computer users to try Linux and several
  Linux-based genealogy programs (including GRAMPS) without affecting
  their current system. This was also followed up by the Linux
  Genealogy Install CD, that allows users to install Ubuntu and a
  range of linux genealogy programs on their computer.

* The IRC channel (#gramps on irc.freenode.net) has become an active
  center, where users and developers can interact. This has become
  an integral part in the GRAMPS development, and all users and
  developers are welcome.

* Work has started on the next major release (2.2), which will include
  a lot of major new features.

* We started hosting a general Linux-Genealogy mailing list on the
  gramps-project site. This list is for the discussion of any issues
  related to Linux and genealogy - not just GRAMPS.

* Work is under way for a printed and bound version of the manual, which
  will be printed by lulu.com. At this point, we figure the manual will
  probably be about 250 pages, and hopefully will be available for under
  $15.

* We have been included in more distributions. We are available in the
  universe repository of Ubuntu and in the fedora-extras repository for
  Fedora. Novell has also listed us as a "Cool Tool" in their "Novell
  Cool Solutions"

* We have had several favorable reviews this year. Linux Format
  Magazine, Linux Magazine, and Linux Pro Magazine all rand articles on
  the project. We were also reviewed by Dick Eastman's Genealogy
  Newsletter.
 
We are looking forward to the new year. We think even bigger things are
in store for the project.

--
Don Allingham
http://don.allingham.org