[Qgis-developer] Windows Installation broken - and cannot uninstall

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:02 AM, Alister  Hood
<Alister.Hood at synergine.com> wrote:
> Hi Tim,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tim Sutton [mailto:lists at linfiniti.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, 9 February 2012 9:26 p.m.
>> To: Alister Hood
>> Cc: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
>> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] Windows Installation broken - and cannot uninstall
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Alister  Hood <Alister.Hood at synergine.com> wrote:
>>
>> -8<-------snip------------------------
>>
>> > - I'm not convinced the OSGeo4W installer is very risky.  Are people
>> > having problems with it without doing an "advanced install" and
>> > choosing weird things?  IMO the only good reason for recommending the
>> > standalone installer is that OSGeo4W doesn't provide ECW libs (but the
>> > standalone installer isn't actually respecting the license on these,
>> > anyway...)
>>
>> Actually the standalone is widely used by people with low bandwidth because the typical pattern is for one person to sacrifice the time / money to download it and then share it widely saving others the expense and time of doing the same.
>
> Well, people are free to do what they want, but if I had bandwidth or speed restrictions I would be even more motivated to use the OSGeo4W installer.
> I guess it is slightly more complicated to share the directory of downloaded packages, but it's still easy, really.  I do it myself whenever I install on a different computer, and I don't even need to worry about bandwidth or speed here.
>
>> Secondly, we did have an agreement with ERMapper to redistribute the ECW libs
>
> Sorry, just to clarify - are you saying someone here contacted  ERMapper and made a special agreement for distributing them with QGIS?  Is this recorded somewhere?  I do know I'm not the only one who refers to the normal ECW license whenever the topic comes up...
>
>> (I believe the agreement should be in the installer bundle),
>
> I'm not sure if there is anything about this displayed during the install process, but once installed there is a file in the install directory called "ECW_EULA.txt".  This is a copy of the license for the "old" ECW version, the one which is also available on Linux.
> But the actual ECW dlls included with the standalone installer are from the "new" ECW version, which is normally under a much more restrictive license (attached in an evil proprietary format ;) ).
> Is there an agreement that says QGIS can distribute the new dlls under the old license?  Or have the dlls been updated in error?  Or has the license not been updated in error?
> There is always the option of using the old ECW version, which could also be distributed with OSGeo4W, and would even allow for writing ECWs...
>
>> although I am unclear as to whether the acquisition of ERMapper by Erdas has impacted on that agreement.
>
> The ECW dlls included with the standalone installer claim to be produced by Erdas.  If the agreement was made before this version of the dlls was released, it seems unlikely that it would apply to them.
>
> It would be good to clarify this whole issue to make sure we're getting it right, and put an explanation somewhere prominent that we can refer people to instead of rehashing the discussion on a regular basis.
>
>
> Alister

As far as I knew were were still shipping the 'old' ecw libs I still
use them myself under linux so that I can write the odd ecw out too.
Paolo was the contact point with ERMapper so I will defer this
discussion to him, but yes it seems we may need to update what we are
shipping / double check our compliance (PITA I know....).

Regards

Tim



-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
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