Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source

[Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>]

On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Bas Zoetekouw wrote:

> > Is there any way for xmedcon to become official without taking those parts
> > mentioned above out of the source code (which neither the upstream author nor
> > me would find very attractive).
>
> Nope.  We cannot distribute software that doesn't have a proper license (the
> Siemens stuff) or is affected by patents (the lzw stuff).
> Note that the source is distributed along with the binaries (as required
> by GPL et al), so disabling the patented/non-free stuff without removing
> it altogether, won't help you at all.
Could you please enlighten us how it is handled in packages like

   gimp1.2-nonfree - GIF support for the GNU Image Manipulation Program

or similiar?  Any references to apply this principle?

Kind regards

         Andreas.