[Qgis-developer] Mrsid business

[Agustin Lobo]

The question is not whether we like those formats, the question is that in
Catalonia we have 303 1:25000 RC orthoimages + 303*4 1:5000 RC orthoimages,
acquired at least twice in most of the country, actually 4 times in many 
cases,
+ additional cover in 1:25000 CIR for most of the country, some of it 
twice. All this
is freely distributed by our mapping agency as MrSid format.
Therefore, there is simply no room for a system not being able to read 
this imagery here.

I do not know for the rest of Spain, but at least for Andalucia the 
situation
is similar. I can look into it in more detail. I'm not sure which is the 
situation
in other European countries, can try to look into that as well.

And the data in the zulu server are 2 worldwide coverages of landsat 
images. Not
insignificant either.

Agus
> Andreas Neumann wrote:
>> I try to avoid ecw and MrSid as you never know what these companies are up
>> to. Tomorrow they may charge you more to access your image data. It is
>> never good to store your data in formats you have no control of.
>>
>> Storage space is so cheap nowadays that I store all of my data in tiffs.
>>
>> ECW is easy to compile on Linux. I never tried to compile MrSid. Back when
>> I tried it was also slower than tiff (with pyramids) and interoperability
>> with other GIS software was poor.
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>>
>> On Wed, April 1, 2009 6:51 pm, Agustin Lobo wrote:
>>     
>>> Darren,
>>>
>>> If you need ECW/Mrsid support (which is important here as most official
>>> imagery is freely distributed
>>> as MrSid and many (excellent) hiking maps as ECW, that in addition to
>>> the Landsat imagery in the
>>> https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/), then, I must sadly state that you
>>> face the following alternative:
>>>
>>> You either use windows and qgis or use linux and not qgis
>>>
>>> (unless you are able to make an special compilation of gdal libraries
>>> and the compile qgis with those libraries in linux)
>>>
>>> Also, as far as I have seen, using grass under windows is not as
>>> straightforward as using it in linux, although it seems
>>> that this is improving.
>>>
>>> Agus
>>> (an ubuntu user forced to often use windows)
>>>
>>>       
Alex Mandel wrote:
> Reading threw several threads it kept coming up and I thought I'd try to
> clarify from what I know.
>
> MrSID is free to use, as with many linux distro's it's not part of the
> defualt build of say gdal because it's not open source. But it is indeed
> free just like acrobat or flash or an of those "non-free" apps.
> This is what I understand from listening to MPG who I believe works for
> lizardtech (which is an OSGeo sponsor).
>
> Maybe we can offer up a 2nd build via launchpad for the "non-free"
> version of gdal build with support turned on.
>
> Alex
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