Re: gif-producing code and sarge?
* Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org) [040524 00:40]:
> On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 08:57:39PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
> > as far as I understood, we probably need for the release of sarge at
> > least six more weeks, i.e. not before 4th July. Some packages are put
> > into non-free/contrib because they produce (direct or indirect)
> > gif-images, and there is a gif patent. According to
> > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html :
> > The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, but it does not
> > expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until 20 June
> > 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004
> What about the IBM patent mentioned there? I realize IBM are generally
> somewhat less arsey about patents such as these than Unisys have been,
> but it still seems like a valid concern.
As far as I can remember, the last discussion we had in d-legal was
that we are only concerned about the Unisys-patent, see e.g.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00168.html and
followups. IIRC there is more than one program in main that contains
patented code; however, as far as I understood, we don't really care
if the patent holder don't put action against dfsg-code and its
usage.
Of course, if we decide to be also concerned about the ibm-patent,
we can't move that code into main for sarge.
> > So, I would like to move these packages / programs into main (more
> > specifically, ppmtogif from netpbm-nonfree into netpbm-free, and file
> > wishlist requests on the appropriate dependend packages). However, as
> > the last expiry falls into the deep freeze (at least I hope this ;),
> > it might be useful to make the move earlier (now?). Well, this
> > decision is of course yours, so please tell me if it's ok to upload
> > packages that produce compressed gif into main earlier than 7th July.
> I think that decision is probably ftpmaster's.
In my understanding, if I upload some gif-producing code into main,
than this is a RC-bug, and the only instance to tag it sarge-ignore
are the release masters. But well, I don't really care who's
responsible for it - it's quite obvious that I won't be it in either
case.
Cheers,
Andi
--
http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/
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