[Xastir-dev] MrSID

[Curt Mills]

Thought some might be interested in this.  Just subscribed to the
gdal-dev list and I came across this in the archives.  There's hope
yet!

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> A few days ago, someone asked about GDAL, MrSID DSDK, and the $500
> fee...  Since GDAL now supports MrSID (thanks Andrey and Frank!), I
> thought I'd provide the official word on this:
>
> We currently charge US$500 for access to the MrSID decode SDKs.
> This gives developers access to our decode SDKs for MrSID and is
> intended to cover our administrative costs for licensing.  Due to
> our licensing arrangements with Los Alamos National Laboratory, we
> are required to have a license agreement in place for developers who
> wish to implement a MrSID solution...
>
> However, we are currently working to simplify the agreement to
> reduce or eliminate the administrative overhead and we hope to
> provide the DSDK free of charge in the near future.  (This will not
> be an open source release, mind you -- just no charge for the DSDK
> libraries and headers.)
>
> For what it's worth, the MrSID team relies on GDAL for some of our
> software and we appreciate everyone's contributions to GDAL.  Our
> movement towards a no-cost DSDK is driven in no small part because
> we want to be able to work inside open source environments like
> this.
>
> [Finally, someone made a comment about MrSID having incompatible
> versions of the file format.  While there certainly have been bugs
> in past releases, we're unaware of any real incompatibility
> problems.  If you think you have found one, please let me know.
> We've always been committed to developers using our software, and
> we'll continue to make every effort to support developers and
> resolve issues as they are brought to our attention...]
>
> -mpg
>
> --------------------------
> Michael P. Gerlek
> Software Architect / MrSID
> mpg at lizardtech.com
> LizardTech Software, Inc.
> Seattle, Washington