[Qgis-developer] QGIS 1.8 Windows Standalone is not OK with spatialite versions (ECW tangent)

[Ramon Andiñach]

On 16/11/2012, at 06:52 , Jürgen E. Fischer wrote:

> Hi Regis,
> 
> On Thu, 15. Nov 2012 at 12:52:03 -0800, haubourg wrote:
>> Jürgen E. Fischer wrote
>>> BTW ECW support was meanwhile dropped in osgeo4w (after the GDAL update to
>>> 1.9.2) and also will lack in the next package.  Neither Frank nor I were
>>> able to mobilize enough energy to jump though all the hoops they've put in
>>> front of their SDK download.  IIRC also the licensing is somewhat strange
>>> to as it allows client, but forbids server use and the user has to
>>> acknowledge it - so we would even have to add own hoops...
> 
>> Do you mean that standard package for 2.0 won't embed ecw support??  I
>> recently made fresh installs with OSGEO4W and was pleased to have ecw support
>> out of the box again.  Is there anything I can do (paying someone to spend a
>> few days clarifying ECW situation) or are we trapped by ERDAS?? 
> 
> Intergraph?

Hexagon(Intergraph(ERDAS(ER Mapper(ECW)))) - I think!
I don't think the ERDAS SDK has been been rebranded yet.

> Anyway, that must have been before GDAL 1.9.2 - after that, the mrsid plugin,
> if installed, even caused an instant crash.  But that package meanwhile rebuilt
> for 1.9.2.
> 
> The current situation is no ECW support in OSGeo4W - and before we were also
> only shipping the gdal ECW plugin, but not the ECW DLLs.
> 
> Building the 3.3 SDK from source with VC10 and doing a GDAL plugin based on
> that also works, but the licensing/distribution issue for the ECW DLLs is
> unclear to me - and therefore we didn't upload that plugin.  It's not usable
> without VC10 builds of the 3.3 ECW DLLs and doubt that they are publically
> available anywhere.


Ah. 

Bummer. 

I suppose that was coming. 

Having had today to think on this I can hopefully say something a (little) bit more intelligent than this morning.

I've discovered that the wretched ER Viewer thing still exists and can help me out if need be. But - I'd very much prefer ecw to be accessible through osgeo4w/qgis.

It's been in my mind this last couple of weeks to ask you and Frank if there was something I could do to help with the gdal-ecw package (since it seems usually to be me making noise). But if it's a licensing thing, I doubt there's much I can do.

My read on the licence is that the "free" desktop download is for desktop only (so not servers), is distributable, and the end product must display the magic notice. I suppose my questions would be:
a) in the osgeo4w situation, who's responsible for that notice? Is it the QGIS team, the OSGeo packagers, or the user that adds the dlls? 
If the dlls were travelling with the plugin, then I'd expect the former two. As the dlls aren't distributed that way it might be that the person who added the dlls has to display the notice. Might it be enough to add some form of disclaimer (that the person installing the plugin warrants that they're following the licence conditions of the EDRAS SDK)?

b) Because the linux and mac gdal installs use the 3.3 SDK source .ecw support will continue in the current manner on those platforms?

c) Does anyone have an set of 3.3 dlls lying around somewhere?

d) If ECW support is disappearing from the osgeo4w packages (and so also the 2.0 standalone when that happens) can it be made abundantly clear (in a visible to average user sort of way)?

Not meaning any criticism (it's not a particularly nice licence and I understand), just looking for a bit more clarity.

-ramon.
(Wondering if should I be signing up to one of the OSGeo lists and asking this there?)