As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats.

GDAL was developed mainly by Frank Warmerdam until the release of version 1.3.2, when maintenance was officially transferred to the GDAL/OGR Project Management Committee under the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

GDAL/OGR is considered a major free software project for its "extensive capabilities of data exchange" and also in the commercial GIS community due to its widespread use and comprehensive set of functionalities.

Such programs include: As of version 2.2.3, GDAL/OGR provides at least partial support for 154 raster and 93 vector geospatial data formats.

[6] A subset of data formats is supported to ensure the ability to directly create files and georeferencing them with the default GDAL compiling options.