Re: Source packages generating non-free and free binary packages
Goswin Brederlow <goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> Can you put the LZW stuff into a library and write a small dummy
> wraper for main (just like the svga_dummy lib). People can then
> replace the dummy lib with the nonfree lib if needed.
> That way you would have a complete free source plus a small non-free
> library.
> Maybe that would be alright.
But this still means that the orig.tar.gz file has to be changed
(not using the Debian diff). This means that the user cannot get the
source somewhere else than from a Debian mirror, because the
orig.tar.gz file is no longer the original tar.gz file. This makes
maintaining the package much harder than normal, because the
maintainer has to handle two patches, the official Debian diff and the
internal (not published) patch to remove the LZW code from orig.tar.gz
before providing it...
But a different question: I don't know the words of the LZW patent nor
do I know anything about patents, but wouldn't there be a chance to
say that it is okay to have source code for a patented algorithm,
which is neither compiled nor used, in an orig.tar.gz file in main? I
know that this source isn't allowed to use to create GIF or TIFF
images, but if ImageMagick is compiled without --enable-LZW, it will
not use the LZW algorithm.
Maybe some of the lawyers here should comment this idea? It would
reduce some of the very ugly problems with LZW...
Tschoeeee
Roland
--
* roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *
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