= [wiki:FAQ] - General =

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== 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 [http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards 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://www.gdal.org/ogr/. 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 [http://www.opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/mit-license.php 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 [http://www.libpng.org/ libpng], [http://www.ijg.org/ libjpeg], [http://remotesensing.org/libtiff/ libtiff], and [http://remotesensing.org/geotiff/geotiff.html 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.

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== How do I add support for a new format? ==

To some extent this is now covered by the [http://www.gdal.org/gdal_drivertut.html GDAL Driver Implementation Tutorial], and the [http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ogr_drivertut.html OGR Driver Implementation Tutorial].