Bug#635994: foo2zjs makes use of embedded, patented libraries
Package: foo2zjs
Version: foo2zjs
Severity: serious
Tags: upstream
Justification: violates DFSG, violates should constraint in policy § 4.13
I was told by an anonymous user in #debian on OFTC (logs upon request available),
that the foo2zjs package is making use of patentended code, embedded into its
source. foo2zjs uses the jbigkit library [1] which in turn consists of paten-
ted code [2].
Examples can be found in the following files:
* jbig_ar.c
* jbig_ar.h
* jbig.c
* jbig.h
all those files cleary state their origin. In addition, the jbigkit library was
intented to be packaged for Debian [3] but was never introduced to Debian (as
far as I can tell) because of this reason. Considering this unclear code distri-
butability and the Debian patent FAQ [4], I hereby request for comments about
this issue and possible solutions.
Please note the original reporters intention was to include, possibly even package
jbigkit for Debian. So his point of view was to either allow jbigkit to be packaged
or foo2zjs to be removed (or cleaned of patented bits) for consistency. This seemed
feasible to me. I personally am not particularly interested in either package, but
would like to have this problem addressed.
[1] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/
[2] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/patents/
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=466427
[4] http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.38-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
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