Bug 9976

Summary:	Patent violation
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	nick34
Component:	gd	Assignee:	Nalin Dahyabhai <nalin>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.2	CC:	nick34
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://burnallgifs.org/
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-05-30 15:24:41 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description nick34 2000-03-05 16:06:08 UTC

Copies of GD that support the GIF format may no longer be used because of
a violation of Unisys's patents (http://burnallgifs.org/ |
http://www.boutell.com/gd/).

RedHat 6.1.92 still ships with version 1.3.6, I think this is a violation
of patents you should be aware of.

Keep up the good work and I hope this information is usefull to you.

Regards, Nick Maeger

Comment 1 Nalin Dahyabhai 2000-03-06 13:35:59 UTC

As of 1.3, gd no longer supports LZW compression, which is what Unisys's patent
covers.  The actual .gif file format is owned by CompuServe.  We're still using
version 1.3 until LinuxConf can be modified to use the newer version.

Comment 2 Nigel Metheringham 2000-05-30 14:09:59 UTC

See http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11756
for a linuxconf enhancement request

Comment 3 Nalin Dahyabhai 2000-05-30 15:24:59 UTC

This will be fixed in the next release, which currently is slated to include
GD 1.8.2.  See Raw Hide (ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/) for a snapshot.