Date: Thu, 18 Jan 1996 16:05:12 +0100 From: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@vector.jhs.local> To: obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu (David E. O'Brien) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hacker's list) Subject: Re: FBSD 2.1 Message-ID: <199601181505.QAA10000@vector.jhs.local> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 16 Jan 1996 02:56:02 PST." <9601161056.AA10894@toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi, Reference: > From: obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu (David E. O'Brien) > Subject: Re: FBSD 2.1 > Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 02:56:02 -0800 (PST) > Message-id: <9601161056.AA10894@toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu> > > > > > Other than that I think we're pretty safe. We're *much* safer with > > using Zip code than shipping the sources to BSD compress around. > > > > Why is that? What is wrong with the sources to BSD compress? > Call me stupid, but aren't they covered by the BSD copyright? In > /usr/src/usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES it suggests that /usr/bin/compress > should be safe as far as this goes. Have I misunderstood? Apparently the people who invented the compress algorithm published it, some others subsequently wrote a C program to implement it, last year it was discovered those publishers had silently applied for a patent, just before publishing I think, & were suddenly starting to make noises about money required. So a nice chap in France wrote a much more efficient thing called `gzip' & the Free Software Foundation (later FreeBSD too) switched from using compress to gzip. Fortunately the compress patent applicants had not applied for a patent to uncompress, so we still have uncompress inside gzip, which left a pleasant forward migration path :-) Gzip is more efficient, compress is being left behind :-) I recall contributing a minor fix to compress once, & suggesting a functional change to gzip (with other people) that was adopted, hence my interest. Julian -- Julian H. Stacey jhs@freebsd.org http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199601181505.QAA10000>