On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Bob Nielsen wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 24, 1999 at 03:35:30PM +0300, Heikki Hannikainen wrote:
> > On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, Benedict P. Barszcz wrote:
> >
> > > Long ago there was a suggestion here on the list to include lzw
> > > compression in the ax25-utils as a library liblzw. This would
> > > facilitate importing it into other programs. There already exists a
> > > library libz that some programs use (IRC) and sources zlib-1.1.2
> > > include an example.c how to use it with its own RFC 1950 - 1952.
> >
> > > If someone could do that one wouldn't have to redo the stuff all over
> > > again for things like TPP,POP,SMTP.
> > >
> > > Or perhaps someone has already done that:-)?
> >
> > Why liblzw, why not use libz as it is?
> >
> > Which, btw, is already happening, the forthcoming ax25 library set will
> > include Tomi's socket IO library extension with zlib support. Things like
> > node will support it out of the box. Stay tuned...
> >
> > LZW has patent restrictions, and zlib's LZ77 is generally better
> > anyway. Beats bare huffman coding as well.
>
> One argument for LZW would be compatibility with xNOS implementations
> which use SM0RGV's lzw.c code.
If I have understood things right the copyright problems would prevent
distributing the utils under GPL. And that pretty much solves the
issue for us: just forget LZW.
When this Unisys/LZW patent issue was raised years ago on the nos-bbs
list, I remember that it was decided to solve the problem by "keeping
quiet" ie. relying on the fact that Unisys won't be interested in a small
hobby group like us...
The reason xNOS uses LZW is the fact that Anders implemented it. Adding
zlib support to xNOS would be _very_ simple, someone should just do that.
--
--... Tomi Manninen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / OH2BNS @ OH2RBI.FIN.EU ...--
