On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 08:03:11PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: > > 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. > > Patents have not generally been regarded as rendering software non-free. > If the license on the software itself meets the DFSG, I believe it's > sufficient to move the package to non-US/main, rather than to non-free. > (Note also that tagging the package as 'non-free' doesn't grant anyone > the right to distribute it in countries where doing so infringes on a > patent-holder's rights.) I haven't seen Hitachi threatening anyone with a lawsuit over RLE. Of course, I also haven't seen Microsoft threaten anyone with a lawsuit over a Save As feature. (YES, they have a patent on Save As - ridiculous but true..) I think Debian suffers from patent paranoia. If Hitachi has not gone out of their way to be annoying with their patent as Unisys has, and the patent is otherwise obvious and ridiculous, why the hell should we cripple Debian for it? Other things that use RLE: SDL_image Quake 2 GIMP Just about any graphics viewer imlib gdk-pixbuf Shall we also remove abiword and the new openoffice packages because they include a Save As feature? How about removing emacs and vi? If Debian hasn't got the balls to stand up for itself in the face of even a ridiculously obvious patent like RLE, we may as well all go home now because there's not a damned thing we can do for our users - even apt and GNU fileutils infringe a pair of other Microsoft patents. That's right, they've got patents on symlinks (a new feature added to Win2k) and on upgrading over the network. Oh we've got years of prior art for either, but I can promise you that people were using RLE compression back as far as 1956. This project needs a backbone. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> If this sig were funny... <WildTHing> ok guys .. so whens the next commit :PP <taniwha> when they come to get me
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