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Message-ID: <4372AD18.76DA8FF5@dessent.net>
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:14:48 -0800
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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To: The Cygwin Mailing List <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Updated: libungif-4.1.4-1
References: <20051110015618 DOT E286F83557 AT pessard DOT research DOT canon DOT com DOT au>
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Luke Kendall wrote:

> Are there still countries left, in which this patent has not yet
> expired?

The unisys patent has expired in most major countries.  There is still
an IBM patent that is valid until sometime in 2006.  I think that most
people believe that IBM would never enforce this patent against a free
software project, but in theory they could.  From what I understand a
lot of image libraries have long since reinstated the LZW code in
shipping binaries but the FSF's official position is that it's still
"not free enough" until the IBM patent expires and until it is confirmed
that no other patents exist in countries where they have yet to search
the patent databases, as detailed at
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html>.  I think there has already
been discussion about this in the cygwin list, but I don't remember what
the resulting conclusion was in terms of what it means for cygwin
packages.

Brian

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