Re: Source packages generating non-free and free binary packages
Roland Rosenfeld <roland@spinnaker.de> writes:
> 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...
Which is quite a pain in the butt...
> 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...
That's exactly what I had in mind...
Phil.
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