🚀 go-pugleaf

Forwarded-For: rms@ai.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 90 14:12:26 EDT

It's not imaginary--it's happening.

The people who wrote the compress program and put it in the public
domain had no way of knowing that a patent was pending for the
algorithm.  The patent was later granted, and now Unisys says we're
not allowed to run compress without their permission.

There doesn't seem to be a basis for overturning the patent legally,
so the FSF is going to have to stop using compress.  It's unlikely
that Unisys would sue us--but we would not want to put the users in a
compromised position where they would need permission to use
uncompress.

We're now looking into other data compression algorithms to use
instead of compress.  If we find one, then we will replace all the
compressed files on prep.  If we cannot come up with something
suitable, then we will switch to uncompressed files for distribution
as soon as we come up with the disk space to store them.

This is just the beginning of the shocks that software patents will
cause the user community.  If you want more information on the issue,
send mail to league@prep.ai.mit.edu and ask for the position paper on
software patents.