Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 21:12:55 +0200
From: Andreas Barth (aba@not.so.argh.org)
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Patents, gimp-nonfree and LAME
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i

* Jose M. Fdez (elzo@iespana.es) [030822 21:05]:
> Patent on LZW algorithm expired so the support for GIF and TIFF
> images is now back in the main Gimp package.

I hope this is not true, otherwise it would be a RC-bug.

According to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html the Unisys patent
| does not expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until
| 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004.
(It is expired in the US.)

(That is the cause why ppmtogif will stay in netpbm-nonfree until 7 July 2004, so it's not in netpbm-free at sarge release.)

Cheers,
Andi
- netpbm maintainer -

(RM adds: The last patent believed relevant to LZW compression was one IBM held in the USA. It expired in August 2006.