[osgeo4w-dev] ECW Plugin

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

Several weeks ago I had discussion with Leica / ERMapper about open
source distribution of ECW enabled applications. We concluded that one
model of handling things was for us to require end users to download the
ECW SDK from Leica themselves, and thus personally agree to the licensing
arrangements for the supporting DLLs.

I have packaged an ECW SDK plugin for GDAL in OSGeo4W based on this premise.

I would appreciate it if someone could try following the instructions I have
prepared for this package and see if they work.

   http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-gdal-ecw

We might ultimately be able to include the ECW SDK DLLs directly with
the OSGeo4W GDAL ECW Plugin at some point in the future, but we would need
to deal with two issues.

1) We need to be able to present an appropriate license agreement to the
end user, for them to review, and agree to as part of the install process
for this package.

2) We need to consider whether it is legal or right for us to distribute
non-open source software, such as the ECW SDK DLLs in the same software
distribution as GPLed components, such as GRASS.

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    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org