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

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> wrote:
> 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?

That would be a bug.  That package should be removed.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu