Jody Garnett wrote: > I think it means that everyone reverse engineered it over time; ESRI > does publish something but at least one of the index files is so poorly > done (or poorly understood) that the open source projects make use of > their own. > Shapefile (like DBF) is so old it appeared before people went crazy > about licensing formats; about as old as FAT (oh wait FAT has a > patent!). Wikipedia has it listed as a "mostly open" format ... > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile
Gloria, Shapefile is mostly open, in that it is a published specification with no intellectual property barriers to implementing the format. But the specification is not maintained by an open standards organization - instead it is just published and controlled by ESRI so there is no "open" way to update it in an organization like ISO or OGC. So it depends on what aspect of "open" is critically important to you. For my purposes it is an open format. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Programmer for Rent ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Geotools-gt2-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-gt2-users
