[Openstreetmap] Satellite images for offline use?

[Alex Willmer]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 21:53 +0200, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 08:29:28PM +0100, christian.graefe at web.de wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > OpenEV is fine.
> > http://openev.sourceforge.net/
> > 
> > But it has poor performance on Windows. Perhaps you try it on Linux?
> 
> Thanks for the pointer. However, OpenEV seems to depend on GDAL
> 
>  "OpenEV requires GDAL library, but it was not found.  Please download
>  and install it.  See http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal"
> 
> which further seems to depend on "ECW SDK libraries provided by
> ERMapper" as Frank Mohr pointed out earlier. I'm trying to understand
> the "ECW SDK" license terms but they are somewhat confusing. Is it
> possible that all ECW software depends on these ERMapper libraries?

Yes, as I understand it ECW is ERMapper's in-house image compression
format. Hence only their software can use it. GDAL has optional ECW
support, only this part relies on the ECW SDK.

The license for the Ermapper ECW JPEG 2000 SDK appears to be here:
http://www.ermapper.com/downloads/download_view.aspx?PRODUCT_VERSION_ID=275

At a glance, although it claims to be GPL like, the EULA doesn't seem
GPL compatible. It's probably BSD compatible (like most things). As
always IANAL, this isn't legal advice.

The equivalent open standard is JPEG 2000. JPEG 2000 has an open source
library called jasper.

http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper/

In terms of getting your ECW decoded under linux, have you tried the SDK
under Wine?

Both ECCW and JPEG 2000 compete with another, similar technology from
Lizardtech called MrSid. All these image formats are based on wavelet
compression, which Lizardtech hold patents on. Lizardtech have tried to
claim in court that these patents cover ECW, and by implication JPEG
2000:

http://www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/index.php?duty=Show&id=9007

Alex

PS Timo, sorry for the duplicate replys.