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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: [gislist] Seeking Opinions on Lizardtech's MrSID |
| Date: |
11/11/2003 03:05:01 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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>
> having been lured into chiming in, given that Clive responded for ECW...
>
> MrSID supports many things that ECW does not, including
> mathematically lossless compression, tile updating, mosaicking
> compressed imagery and the new functionality including
> recompressing (optimization) resampling and cropping on the fly,
> plus a user interface that virtually anyone can use, not just an
> image analyst.
>
> Additionally MrSID is the most widely supported wavelet
> compression format, available natively in almost every CAD and
> GIS package in the world. A file format so widely supported
Given that ERMapper's ECW is supported by virtually every CAD and GIS
package in the world as well, I think you are overreaching by stating
unilaterally that MrSID is the "most widely supported" format.
I don't disagree that MrSID support occurs within many CAD and GIS packages,
but most such packages sell such an absurdly small number of units, or, in
the case of CAD packages are so very rarely used with images, they have
near-zero impact on what most people actually do. What counts is what the
high volume players working with images choose, and it seems to me that high
volume players like Manifold are moving to ECW. Manifold can sell more
licenses in one day than, say, Intergraph sells all year, so the cumulative
effect of a lot of volume can be very significant.
We're not in the compression or format business and have no intention of
entering it so long as we can get something off the shelf that works well
and meets the needs of our customers. For now, ECW has a solution that's
doable and MrSID does not (as a result of the unusual legal conditions you
have chosen to impose).
> hardly represents something being "held hostage" as you put it.
> No need for unsupported plugins that require IT permissions to deploy.
>
Let me clarify the "held hostage" bit. Please correct me if I am wrong, but
it seems that
a) There is no longer a free, unrestricted viewer available from LizardTech
and
b) In order to offer MrSID format, any third party software vendor would
have to agree to the reprehensible, anticompetitive terms within the
LizardTech SDK license.
c) You didn't create the MrSID format in the first place but licensed it
from Los Alamos where it was developed with public funds, so you are
"holding" it - whether "in trust" or "hostage" depends on how you
sublicense the technology.
The first two points mean that the format is genuinely "held hostage" in
that it is not possible for a public agency to provide images in MrSID
format without LizardTech holding a gun to the head of users to compel them
to agree to anticompetitive and possibly illegal terms and conditions of
use. That "gun" is either the need to purchase a viewer or the reduced
value in a third party vendor constrained by the terms of the SDK.
LizardTech could fix the above two problems with the stroke of a pen. It
would be trivially easy to once more provide access to the free viewer you
used to provide and, should you decide to have confidence in your
technology, to eliminate the unusual anticompetitive provisions within your
SDK. Microsoft, Oracle, ERMapper and numerous other companies have no
problems crafting an SDK license without any egregiously anticompetitive
provisions, so no doubt your lawyers would have plenty of models to work
from should they choose to take a free market approach.
Until, however, you actually show confidence in your product by competing
with it instead of depending upon reprehensible legal crutches, your talk
about how great MrSID is rings hollow. If it were in fact so great, it
seems to me you would not hesitate to compete on the strength of your
product instead of seeking shelter through litigation and dubious contract
provisions.
My own opinion is that MrSID probably does indeed offer many technical
benefits as you enumerate, but that somewhere there is a screw loose in your
managerial structure where some meathead is making very bad business
decisions that cause unnecessary roadblocks to uptake of your technology
solutions. For example, there is little doubt (given the lessons taught by
the sorry history of companies who chose to litigate instead of competing)
that had LizardTech deployed the same level of effort into innovation and
customer service that you wasted via the absurd suit against ERMapper, you
might still be an independent company today.
> Finally, Jpeg2000 will have a future but for some time to come,
> there are a lot of folks invested in an existing workflow and
> format, not to mention waiting for vendor applications to support
> it. Lizardtech is uniquely in the position to support this
> industry in a much more robust fashion than any of our so-called
You're kidding, right? Is burning
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