Landsat Download (the good things with free software)

=> Those who know me know that I work with Linux and that I like to use free softwares, even if it is not always easy at CNES where everything is around windows :-(. But before I started this blog, I had never contributed with free software. A few months ago, I published here two pieces of code, one is SMAC (I just did a translation into Python), to do easy but approximate atmospheric corrections, the other is Landsat Download, to automatically download Landsat data from USGS website. These two codes are among the pages most often read in this blog. A few weeks ago, one user of Landsat-Download tool suggested to host the code on GitHub, and I did it at the end of July (I published a piece of code for the first time !). And it was a pleasure to discover that a few days later, I had two contributions to this code, one from Jake Brinkmann, who added a nice progress bar, and one from Michel Lepage from CESBIO, which contributes to an interface simplification that I just implemented in the new version. In brief, the module I released has been nicely enhanced, and as I am one of the main users, I benefit from it every day. Well, I know that my colleagues who have been producing free softwares since their childhood will say that I just re-invented the wheel…. And finally, remember that, if you need well processed LANDSAT data over France, with cloud masks and atmospheric correction, you might also try the products provided by THEIA.