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Re: Are GPLed .gifs legal at all ???



Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> I found that > 60 packages in Debian have .gifs included.
> 
> I will probably fill wishlist bugs against them all unless
> someone oppose this.
> 
> Is it legal at all to distribute GPL'ed .gifs at all ?

It's my understanding that the lzw compression usually used in GIFs
is patented, not the GIF file format itself.  For example, the
default for ImageMagick is to compile it without lzw compression
built in.  Thus it makes GIF files that are much larger in
filesize but legal.

Peter



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