* Colin Watson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [040524 00:40]: > On Sun, May 23, 2004 at 08:57:39PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote: > > 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
> What about the IBM patent mentioned there? I realize IBM are generally > somewhat less arsey about patents such as these than Unisys have been, > but it still seems like a valid concern. As far as I can remember, the last discussion we had in d-legal was that we are only concerned about the Unisys-patent, see e.g. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/02/msg00168.html and followups. IIRC there is more than one program in main that contains patented code; however, as far as I understood, we don't really care if the patent holder don't put action against dfsg-code and its usage. Of course, if we decide to be also concerned about the ibm-patent, we can't move that code into main for sarge. > > 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. > I think that decision is probably ftpmaster's. In my understanding, if I upload some gif-producing code into main, than this is a RC-bug, and the only instance to tag it sarge-ignore are the release masters. But well, I don't really care who's responsible for it - it's quite obvious that I won't be it in either case. 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
