Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 07:44:36PM -0800, Terry Hancock wrote: On Monday 11 November 2002 11:02 am, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: Fortunately, the lzw patent expires this coming June. Is that true? That would be really nice! (Finally, I can support buggy old browsers in my web application). No sarcasm -- lots of people are still using them, and I'd like to use some GIFs to keep them happy (I'm not really going into production mode until June anyway, probably). I've heard rumors that derivative patents of LZW have been filed as a gambit to keep the original patent from being effectively useful to anyone. Pharmaceutical companies play similar games (at least in the U.S., where government-subsidized monopolies are considered an intrinsic aspect of the free market). However, I've only heard rumors, not anything I'd consider definitive. -- G. Branden Robinson| Communism is just one step on the Debian GNU/Linux | long road from capitalism to [EMAIL PROTECTED] | capitalism. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Russian saying pgpz2ITCbSMew.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Fortunately, the lzw patent expires this coming June. There is more than one LZW patent on the world. :-(
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 02:36:08PM -0800, Walter Landry wrote: Andreas Tille [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. Be careful when making non-free smaller, it will only piss off the opponents of John Goerzen's General Resolution. :) -- G. Branden Robinson| Reality is what refuses to go away Debian GNU/Linux | when I stop believing in it. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Philip K. Dick http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpbIvFhyZlrt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
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? Kind regards Andreas.
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
On Monday 11 November 2002 11:02 am, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: Fortunately, the lzw patent expires this coming June. Is that true? That would be really nice! (Finally, I can support buggy old browsers in my web application). No sarcasm -- lots of people are still using them, and I'd like to use some GIFs to keep them happy (I'm not really going into production mode until June anyway, probably). Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
Hi, I am using xmedcon (http://xmedcon.sourceforge.net/) and did my first debian package with that. This package should be sponsored to become official soon. The package is generally gpl but has to parts with problems in it. 1) Code to create gif-files (with lzw compression). This is part of the code and not linked to giflib/libungif 2) Code that was given the author by siemens with no explicit license. I originally planned on compiling the package without support for those formats but I didn't plan on modifying the original code more than necessary (one can drop the formats as a ./configure option). I wanted to document that in README.Debian so people can compile their own enabling those formats. Now I stumbled over the Weekly News: Leaving the LZW Algorithm in Source Files? Chris Halls [30]asked if he may leave a source file that implements a patented algorithm (LZW compression for GIFs) in the source tarball for OpenOffice.org. The file is not built or distributed in the binary packages, though. Walter Landry [31]claims that you are not allowed to distribute an implementation of a patent and Branden Robinson [32]added that Debian should not be shipping anything in main that isn't DFSG-free. 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). Thanks for any help, Roland PS:xPost do debian-med since the package should become part of it. I have subscibed to debian-med but not to debian-legal, so please CC to me. -- Roland Marcus Rutschmann [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
Hi Roland! You 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. -- Kind regards, ++ | Bas Zoetekouw | GPG key: 0644fab7 | || Fingerprint: c1f5 f24c d514 3fec 8bf6 | | [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] | a2b1 2bae e41f 0644 fab7 | ++ pgpAqvDg6V3L3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source
On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 11:59 AM, Bas Zoetekouw wrote: Nope. We cannot distribute software that doesn't have a proper license (the Siemens stuff) or is affected by patents (the lzw stuff). Fortunately, the lzw patent expires this coming June.
