2007.07.16 09:04 "Re: [Tiff] [ANNOUNCE]: Libtiff 4.0.0alpha released", by Andy Cave

So what happens if someone builds a standalone piece of s/w (tiffjbigdecomp) that reads (compressed) data from stdin and writes (uncompressed) data to stdout. They can then write s/w that execs a sub-process, redirecting stdin/stdout to be a file on disk and a pipe, and then just read the decompressed data from the pipe. Does that infringe GPL? I think not (as otherwise no commercial s/w could run on Linux), in which case I think the claim that dynamic loading / linking does (infringe GPL) is not necessarily solid, as the difference between that and dynamic linking to a library is pretty thin.

Andy.

----- Original Message -----

On the JBIG issue, I think it's pretty safe to say that the debian version of libtiff will not include JBIG support. I wonder whether there would be a way to make JBIG support available at runtime on platforms that support dynamic loading. In any case, I think the

A number of years ago I engaged in a discussion with Richard Stallman and the JBIG-KIT author to discuss if using dynamic loading to use JBIG-KIT was acceptable (in order to avoid GPL by providing separability) and the opinion of RMS and the JBIG-KIT author was a solid 'no'. However, it seems to me that it does allow users who are using GPL compliant distribution methods to extend the package later or remove the component.

There is yet another issue that JBIG-KIT itself is not distributable under the GPL (even though it uses the GPL license) since it violates patents recognized in many countries.