LizardTech DSDK Version 6.0
When I first started working with GDAL, MrSID images were all about, and it looked like it was becoming the emergent standard for wavelet compressed geospatial imagery. I railed and complained rather loudly when I found out that I couldn’t just download the DSDK and start working with the imagery. Eventually (I don’t know if my squawking actually had any impact), LizardTech made the DSDK available for free download (requiring registration and EULA reading), but the DSDK had some somewhat onerous clauses in its license that prevented packages like FWTools, MS4W, QGIS, and GRASS from distributing the DSDK libraries. This left users in a tough spot and placed extra burden on developers to repackage software in such a way that “plugin” approaches could be used (individual users had to download the DSDK themselves and set some magic switches).
Michael Gerlek of LizardTech sat next to myself and Frank Warmerdam at the Februrary 4th bootstrapping meeting of OSGeo. We took the opportunity to describe some of the issues we had with the DSDK license and how it caused hang-ups for purveyors of binary builds. Later, as LizardTech was preparing for the latest release of the DSDK, Michael contacted Frank and I so we could describe the issues we had.
- Allow the redistribution of DLLs, .so’s, .libs, and include files so things like the “buildkit” can be distributed with the DSDK. The MapServer Buildkit allows users to build MapServer/GDAL on Windows with MSVC 2003 by providing most things pre-compiled/configured so folks can tweak the options that they need in MapServer/GDAL.
- Focus sections about promoting and branding MrSID to be specific about the browser plugin, not the entire DSDK.
Expect to see the MrSID DSDK distributed widely with your favorite Open Source GIS tools in the coming months….
Head to http://developer.lizardtech.com to get a copy if your interested.
PS. LizardTech, please ship the source code to the DSDK so we can compile it for all sorts of weird platforms and give you bug reports 