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From: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD free?
Message-ID: <D0GvM0.5EA@calcite.rhyolite.com>
Organization: Rhyolite Software
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 00:49:12 GMT
References: <KSTAILEY.94Dec6121810@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov> <3c2h41$oq2@dagny.galt.com> <KSTAILEY.94Dec7103038@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Lines: 41
In article <KSTAILEY.94Dec7103038@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov> kstailey@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov (Kenneth Stailey) writes:
>>FreeBSD and NetBSD both have no GPLed code in the kernel. NetBSD makes a
>>point of having as little as possible elsewhere, but FreeBSD makes the
>>decision on a program by program basis (or this is what was going a
>>while ago, and as far as I know neither group has changed their stance).
>
>Hey there are a whole lot of worse things than the GPL. Take software
>patents for instance. Did you know that /usr/ucb/compress is
>technically illegal to sell because Unisys has a patent on the algorithm?
>Nobody pays much attention to this though.
That is false in several ways
- the GPL people pay a lot of "attention" to compress vs the LZW
patents, I think mostly because compress.c is not covered by
the GPL. The GPL people think people working on BSD software
without adding GPL's are Traitors To Humanity.
- the situation with the two LZW patents (one by Unisys that everyone
talks about and another 2 weeks prior by IBM) with respect to
compress.c is murky.
+ At one time, Unisys informally told software vendors to go
ahead and not worry about the patent
+ USL worried anyway, but bought a license for UNIX(tm). I
think it was after SVR3.2 which had `pack` but no `compress`,
and before SVR4, which I think has `compress`. I'm not
certain that is why SVR4 has compress. Maybe instead of
paying Unisys, USL decided to stop worrying.
- people building hardware using LZW, including people building
modems with v.42bis, pay plenty of attention to the Unisys
patent, as well as about $20K to Unisys. (I think the
comp.compression FAQ mentions the cost of an LZW license.)
- there are things worse than the GPL, including software patents,
but there are also things much better than the GPL, such
as the BSD copyrights.
Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com