[Gdal-dev] GDAL/OGR and the MapServer Foundation

[Andy Canfield]

Oh well it was worth a shot on the dwg stuff. However I think the
Foundation would be a very good thing as you have described it. It
would allow developers to do what they do best ( develop ) and keep
the code license clean allowing work to continue quickly rather than
have folks worrying about if they are going to get called into court
because something they worked on is now a part of a law suite. It
would also be nice to have an organizing and governing body attached
to the project to handle all those things that developers generally (
or at least I do ) hate worrying about. It would also give a public
face to the code which would also be very nice. I see a lot of pluses
and I really don't see any minuses as Frank has described how his idea
of it works. Does somebody else out there see something I am not
seeing or does everyone else see this as a really good thing as well?

On 11/30/05, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/05, Andy Canfield <andy.canfield at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would Autodesk contribute the ability to read/write the DWG format in
> > all it's many incompatible versions to OGR without having to buy
> > something from them?
>
> Andy,
>
> My understanding is that Autodesk only has one way of reading
> and working with DXF/DWG files, and it basically drags the
> entire AutoCAD core along with it.  So, no, they won't likely
> be providing DWG/DXF support.  I would add it isn't their
> foundation.  It would hopefully be "our" foundation though they
> would be members too.  I don't forsee a move to join the
> foundation as being very specifically related to Autodesk.
>
> > If they did that, that alone would make it worth
> > it. GDAL/OGR is Frank's opus and he has never done anyting unwise with
> > it so as long as he supports doing this then I see no reason why not
> > to do this. However if Autodesk inserts their FDO code into GDAL/OGR
> > under any license that would allow them to later come back and make
> > portions of the library usable only with some sort of contract with
> > Autodesk then I would be completely against that.
>
> FDO is released under the LGPL.  While I am happy to include some
> sort of FDO bridge, I'm not keen on having LGPL code directly in
> the default GDAL/OGR builds.  One role of the foundation would
> (presumably) be to help ensure the code base is "license clean".
>
> Best regards,
> --
> ---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
> 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
>