GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single raster abstract data model and vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful commandline utilities for data translation and processing. The NEWS page describes the September 2015 GDAL/OGR 2.0.1 release.
