2005.07.25 17:57 "[Tiff] JBIG compression support", by Lee Howard

2005.07.25 18:30 "Re: [Tiff] JBIG compression support", by Lee Howard

I am sending this message to announce the development and to solicit any discussion that others may wish to have on this topic.

Most excellent! JBIG-KIT uses the GPL license (not LGPL) and I have heard that use of JBIG is covered by some patents. Since this is the case, should the configure script default to not supporting JBIG so that users don't accidentally violate licenses?

The patch on the bug report does not enable JBIG support unless --enable-jbig is used. I don't have any preference whether it remains like this or if it is changed to autodetect.

For those who may wish to use JBIG-KIT outside of the GPL, I do believe that Markus offers other licensing privately, but my understanding is that the licensing will not offer any patent indemnification.

Markus seems to have done a deliberate and thorough analysis of the patent situation here:

  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/patents.html

As I am not a patent lawyer I can't really offer any more comments on the patent issue than that.

Thanks,

Lee.