[osgeo4w-dev] GDAL 1.7 preliminary package available

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jürgen E. Fischer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, 12. Jul 2010 at 20:54:57 +0200, Jürgen E. Fischer wrote:
>> On Mon, 12. Jul 2010 at 14:13:57 -0400, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>>> I have prepared a gdal17 package for GDAL 1.7.2.  This is the first
>>> publishing of GDAL 1.7.x via OSGeo4W.  I also hope to prepare a
>>> gdal17-python and gdal17-mrsid package soon.
> 
>> Thanks.  The next qgis-dev build will use it...
> 
> Uploaded.  And it took only 1.5h for the first QGIS ticket[1] about the missing
> ECW support to appear.   Is that planned too?

Jürgen,

As noted in the ticket, Erdas no longer provides the ECW DLLs for free on
their web site so it is impractical for people who don't already happen
to have the DLLs to get the GDAL ECW plugin working even if I were to
build it.  So I'm inclined not to.

In my personal opinion Erdas now desires a level of control over how the
ECW libraries are used that is largely incompatible with the distribution
of free software.   In the past we forced the user to get the DLLs directly
from Erdas so they could accept the Erdas licensing terms themselves.   But
now some sort of interactive vetting process is required for each individual
wanting the DLLs that is really aimed at commercial software developers.

OSGeo4W is not really organized in a good way to enforce the required terms
on the user.

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