Re: [patch] Removal of GIF support

Jan> Kyle Jones <kyle_jones(a)wonderworks.com&gt; writes: Jan> Only the users of w3.el won't be too happy :-(. If only Jan> unisys had been forced to (try to) enforce the bloody patent Jan> from the start... Users of w3.el (and vm.el and so on) aren't in too bad shape, I should think. Anything using mimecap or similar can use "giftopnm | pnmtopng" or similar incantation; Unisys cannot find and punish all such users, especially since that particular code has a 1993 copyright. Better yet, ppmtogif has a copyright of 1989! Presumably there are a lot of legacy systems around with old copies of netpbm.... Of course, anybody who uses such a program must consider that Unisys and IBM have patents on the LZW algorithm, and should get legal advice as to whether they need to obtain a license to continue to use it. And I'm not advocating such a procedure, of course, merely pointing out that we're all smart enough to figure it out, purely as an intellectual exercise. (After that humiliating disclaimer, I'm almost ready to go to law school, I bet!) Seriously, even the current rabid statements from Unisys do not seem to be oriented toward punishing users, so quite likely such use of netpbm is safe, as long as we don't distribute it ourselves. -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +1 (298) 53-5091