Re: Adding back compressed GIF code to cernlib after July 7 -- any objections?
* Kevin B. McCarty (kmccarty@Princeton.EDU) [040706 15:55]:
> My understanding is that the last known patent on LZW compression held
> by Unisys, in Canada, expires tomorrow, July 7th 2004. I plan to ask my
> sponsor, Bas Zoetekouw, to upload a version of cernlib with compressed
> GIF creation support added back in soon afterwards. (This may be
> delayed several days from the expiry date due to some real-life
> obligations I have.) Any objections?
I agree with that. I myself have some other gif-producing code I want
to upload. This issue has been discussed in February, and the outcome
was to me that it is ok to upload gif-producing code, even as there is
a patent hold by IBM. The current policy seems to be to ignore patents
as long as the patent holder doesn't activly enforce them:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00174.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00211.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00261.html
@ftpmasters: I was told that you are the ones who do the final
decision what's allowed into main. If you see any reason to disallow
uploading of gif-producing code after today, can you please say so?
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
Reply to: