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gif-creating applications?



Hi

what's the legal status of inclusion of gif-creating applications in
debian? Is it ok to include it in main, contrib or non-free?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html says that the latest patent
expiry is 7 July 2004, but Unisys seems to have given parts of their
patent free (but only for non-comercial use). Any new uploaded code
would go only to testing, and release if probably after patent expiry.
(I'm not asking about a new programm, but of code that's already in
non-free at the moment, so a total remove will break existing
programms.)

So, my question is:
1. Is it ok to have gif-producing binaries in testing/main?
2. Is it ok to have gif-producing binaries in testing/non-free?
3. Is it ok to have the source of gif-producing binaries in testing/main?

I'm not a reader of debian-legal. I really would prefer if I just can
get a "verdict" after your discussion, but it's probably better if you
would Cc me on replies.


Cheers,
Andi
-- 
   http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/
   PGP 1024/89FB5CE5  DC F1 85 6D A6 45 9C 0F  3B BE F1 D0 C5 D1 D9 0C



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