On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:43:46 +0200, in gmane.os.cygwin.applications you wrote:
>On Sep 28 20:10, Nicholas Wourms wrote: >> On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:06:31 -0500, in gmane.os.cygwin.applications >> you wrote: [SNIP] >I don't think the FSF information given on >http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html qualifies as FUD. > Well, every time we reach the date that the FSF says the patent expires, they "revise" it to include "new" information which wasn't previously known. I know for a fact that they've moved the goalpost at least 3 times since the original UNISYS expiration date. I find it rather suspicious, as if opposing LZW is institutional and they refuse to change. Since I am not RedHat and you are, of course you should do what you think is right. However, I would find it very bizaare to see IBM sue over the LZW patent after they just spent literally millions of $$$ fending off a lawsuit from SCO based on similar concepts. They are heavily focused on consulting/software and it would not be in their best interest to alienate the FSF community. That is why I call it FUD. Frankly, I don't understand why either RMS or ESR doesn't just talk to senior management at IBM and clear this up once and for all. > >Fedora also only supports uncompressing gifs via libungif. Other >packages, like gimp, don't support creating LZW compressed GIFs, >unly uncompressed or run-length encoded. > I was specifically referring to libtiff & zip, which AFAIK have re-merged the external LZW code. >This means, let's stick with libungif until at least 2006-08-12. If that's what you want, then I'm sure you are doing what is best for RedHat. I will note that I was chatting with the upstream author a few months back. He told me, at least at the time, that he would be dropping the non-LZW package soon in favor of reunifying the giflib and libungif packages (for easier maintainence). I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Cheers, Nicholas
