.. _about:

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What is GDAL?
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.. descriptionstartshere

GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats that is released under an MIT style Open Source :ref:`license` by the `Open Source Geospatial Foundation`_. As a library, it presents a single raster abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. The `NEWS`_ page describes the September 2025 GDAL/OGR 3.11.4 release.

.. only:: html

   |offline-download|

.. image:: ../images/OSGeo_project.png
   :alt:   OSGeo project
   :target:  `Open Source Geospatial Foundation`_

.. _`Open Source Geospatial Foundation`: http://www.osgeo.org/
.. _`NEWS`: https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/v3.11.4/NEWS.md

See :ref:`software_using_gdal`

.. |DOI| image:: ../images/zenodo.5884351.png
   :alt:   DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5884351
   :target: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5884351

You may quote GDAL in publications by using the following Digital Object Identifier: |DOI|
