ArcGIS 9.2 Uses GDAL for Raster Support
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the GDAL (pronounced “gee-del” I think) project here. It’s an open source translator library for raster geospatial data formats that a lot of open source projects, such as MapServer, use for raster support, and it works extremely well.
In fact, GDAL works so well ESRI is adopting it for ArcGIS 9.2. It will allow you to extent ArcGIS to support customer raster formats through the GDAL format driver.
I have nothing else to add here - just an arcane tidbit of information I ran across in the excellent All Points Blog.