Re: LPF Statement on the GIF controversy (LZW patent)

[mikebw@bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

kz1f wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 k> Perhaps licensing restrictions is why the RFC's governing
 k> SMTP or FTP  protocols dont address compressing the buffers.

Also, as far as I know, the LZ part is in the public domain and it is only the
W part that is claimed by patent.  There is no particular reason we have to use
LZW in NOS or anything else, which is one of the truly stupid aspects of this
patent issue.  We could just as easily recode to use an unquestionably public
domain compression method, just as the Unix world has done by ditching compress
and going to gzip.
 
-- Mike