Re: nomarch-1.2 - Problems with RLE patent 4,586,027
Le Vendredi 17 Mai 2002 01:58, Matthew Grant a écrit :
> Dear James,
>
> Could you please withdraw the nomarch package from the main upload
> queue. This thing belongs in non-free.
>
> Sorry about this. I have tried to be careful. Who would have thought
> that such an obvious compression technique (Run Length Encoding - count
> number of bytes in a row of same value, store count and byte value) is
> covered by a software patent? Due to only using LZW decompression and
> Huffman encoding, I thought that this thing was in the clear. Instead
> I find compression technology has a big raft of software patents...
>
> See the compresion FAQ up at
> ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/compression-faq/ section 1
> for the goods on it....
>
> Could you please withdraw the nomarch package from the main upload
> queue. This thing belongs in non-free.
>
> I have just done some further investigation of the IP behind this
> thing, and the RLE decoding is covered by a Hitachi patent 4,586,027
> (filed 08/07/84, granted 04/29/86) that is due to run out in July 2004
> I believe.
>
I think this package doesn't have to be moved to non-free. It doesn't
violates the DFSG, but rather a patent on software. Patents on software
are not valid in a lot of countries, for example in Europa. Maybe moving
it non-US would be the right choice.
Aurelien
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