FAQ - General

1. What is GDAL?
2. What does GDAL stands for?
3. What is this OGR stuff?
4. What does OGR stands for?
5. What exactly was the license terms for GDAL?
6. How do I add support for a new format?

What is GDAL?

GDAL name is usually used to name one of following:

• project of translation libraries for raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) data formats, so in this case GDAL = GDAL + OGR
• translator library for raster geospatial data formats.

What does GDAL stands for?

GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

What is this OGR stuff?

The GDAL/oGR tree holds source for a vector IO library inspired by ​OpenGIS Simple Features. In theory it is separate from GDAL, but currently they reside in the same source tree and are somewhat entangled. More information can be found at ​http://ogr.maptools.org. It is my plan to properly fold OGR into GDAL properly at some point in the future. Then GDAL will be a raster and vector library.

What does OGR stands for?

OGR used to stand for OpenGIS Simple Features Reference Implementation. However, since OGR is not fully compliant with the OpenGIS Simple Feature specification and is not approved as a reference implementation of the spec the name was changed to OGR Simple Features Library. The only meaning of OGR in this name is historical. OGR is also the prefix used everywhere in the source of the library for class names, filenames, etc.

What exactly was the license terms for GDAL?

The following terms are the same as X windows is released under, and is generally known as the ​MIT License. It is intended to give you permission to do whatever you want with the GDAL source, including building proprietary commercial software, without further permission from me, or requirement to distribute your source code. A few portions of GDAL under under slightly different terms. For instance the ​libpng, ​libjpeg, ​libtiff, and ​libgeotiff license terms may vary slightly though I don't think any of them differ in any significant way. Some external libraries which can be optionally used by GDAL are under radically different licenses.

Copyright (c) 2000, Frank Warmerdam

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

How do I add support for a new format?

To some extent this is now covered by the ​GDAL Driver Implementation Tutorial, and the ​OGR Driver Implementation Tutorial.