[gdal-dev] License: Creating GDAL package with ECW support

[Even Rouault]

Le lundi 08 août 2011 16:09:18, Otto Dassau a écrit :
> Am Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:29:33 +0200
> 
> schrieb Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:
> > Il 08/08/2011 15:07, Otto Dassau ha scritto:
> > > I would like to add ECW support for GDAL in OpenSUSE packages and in
> > > the internet, from what I found so far, it seems to be ok without any
> > > license problems - is that correct? Can you help me here?

You might find it interesting to read this old thread : http://osgeo-
org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/ECW-Licence-td2047065.html

that particularly points to :
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-general/2005-
August/001083.html

In summary what I've understood is that none of the 3 options of the (old) 
licence that came with libecwj 3.3 can be considered as a free licence. For 
example the 1st one, the "ECW JPEG 2000 SDK PUBLIC USE LICENSE AGREEMENT" 
restricts what you can do with the source code : "You are not permitted to 
change the ECW file format.", which is incompatible with the principles of all 
free licences.

You could perhaps build ECW support for GDAL as a GDAL plugin and put it in a 
"non-free" repository, if that notion exists for OpenSUSE. That's what the 
UbuntuGIS team has done for example.


> > 
> > Hi Otto,
> > a few years ago I had confirmation that the licence of ECW allowed
> > redistribution, but I think in the meanwhile things have changed.
> > Giovanni (cc:) has followed the question recently, better ask him. Also,
> > I think we should discuss about this in the public ML.
> > All the best.
> 
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