isabella232 / moss

Heritage archives of the first-ever Open Source GIS: Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS), containing its original codebase and help documentation.

PC-MOSS Historical Archive

The Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS) is the earliest known Open Source Geographic Information System. The first version of MOSS was developed by Carl Reed in the late 1970's as part of a US Fish and Wildlife Service habitat mitigation project. The first version of MOSS was programmed in FORTRAN on a CDC mainframe and then ported to a Data General minicomputer in 1979 and 1980. The first US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) installation of MOSS occurred in 1980 at the BLM Oregon State Office. PC-MOSS is the Windows version of MOSS that was developed & released by Sol Katz, through the BLM. This repository contains the PC-MOSS files, including the FORTRAN language source code.

Archive Date

~1987

Archive Credits

In mid-2020 a surviving copy of the MOSS codebase was discovered at the University of Latvia, and was temporarily preserved at the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW Berlin).

In Honour of Sol Katz

Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the FOSS4G world. Those interested in making a donation, as per Sol's family's request, can do so at https://donate.cancer.org.

The annual Sol Katz Award (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Sol_Katz_Award), which began in 2005, acknowledges the work of FOSS4G community members, and pays tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

For more information, please refer to https://unlicense.org