[Gdal-dev] Primary Sponsorship by ER Mapper

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

Over the last few months ER Mapper has been talking with me about
an option for them to provide some sponsorship for GDAL.   I am pleased
to announce that we have come to an agreement where they would 
provide regular monthly funding sufficient to cover approximately 3 
days worth of development on GDAL in return for their being listed as 
the primary sponsor of GDAL on the GDAL web site. 

There aren't any technical requirements attached to this sponsorship.
In particular I am still free to work with any companies that might be
considered competitors of ER Mapper and I intend to do so.  

I believe that a press release will be prepared at some point in the
near future in which ER Mapper can provide more detail on their
rationale for this sponsorship, but I believe it comes out of a corporate
support for the importance of openness and interoperability.  

For my part, I am very pleased with the open ended support allowing
me to spend more time focusing on core GDAL maintenance, and I
am also pleased with the association with ER Mapper - whose products
I admired even when I worked at PCI and they were a major competitor.
I have also been very pleased with their openness (in licensing, and
source) for the ECW/JPEG2000 SDK in recent years.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent