Hi what's the legal status of inclusion of gif-creating applications in debian? Is it ok to include it in main, contrib or non-free? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html says that the latest patent expiry is 7 July 2004, but Unisys seems to have given parts of their patent free (but only for non-comercial use). Any new uploaded code would go only to testing, and release if probably after patent expiry. (I'm not asking about a new programm, but of code that's already in non-free at the moment, so a total remove will break existing programms.)
So, my question is: 1. Is it ok to have gif-producing binaries in testing/main? 2. Is it ok to have gif-producing binaries in testing/non-free? 3. Is it ok to have the source of gif-producing binaries in testing/main? I'm not a reader of debian-legal. I really would prefer if I just can get a "verdict" after your discussion, but it's probably better if you would Cc me on replies. Cheers, Andi -- http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/ PGP 1024/89FB5CE5 DC F1 85 6D A6 45 9C 0F 3B BE F1 D0 C5 D1 D9 0C
