Hi, as far as I understood, we probably need for the release of sarge at least six more weeks, i.e. not before 4th July. Some packages are put into non-free/contrib because they produce (direct or indirect) gif-images, and there is a gif patent. According to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html : The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, but it does not expire in most of Europe until 18 June 2004, in Japan until 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004
So, I would like to move these packages / programs into main (more specifically, ppmtogif from netpbm-nonfree into netpbm-free, and file wishlist requests on the appropriate dependend packages). However, as the last expiry falls into the deep freeze (at least I hope this ;), it might be useful to make the move earlier (now?). Well, this decision is of course yours, so please tell me if it's ok to upload packages that produce compressed gif into main earlier than 7th July. 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
