[ros-dev] Re: [ros-svn] [mbosma] 20952: Delete libjpeg because bla bla ...

[Maarten Bosma]

Hi,

> I believe that something like that is easily commented out, and does 
> not require a removal of the entire lib.


No, that is already disabled by default as far as I know, we are talking 
about another patent: U.S. Patent 4,698,672 
<http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=4,698,672> that 
will expire on *October 27, 2006.*

Also I'd also like to explain that this lib was never used. It did only 
import it into /vendor and not into /trunk/reactos/lib, so a revert of 
my delete would be pointless if none wants to write code that uses it. I 
do have imported it in my working copy, together with a almost done 
patch for jpeg-wallpaper loading, but I have decided not to commit it 
until *October 27, 2006.

*Here is a quote from interesting quote from wikipedia:

> In 2002 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002> Forgent Networks 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgent_Networks> asserted that it owns 
> and will enforce patent <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent> rights 
> on the JPEG technology, arising from a patent that had been filed in 
> 1986 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986> (U.S. Patent 4,698,672 
> <http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=4,698,672>). 
> The announcement has created a furor reminiscent of Unisys 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys>' attempts to assert its rights 
> over the GIF <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF> image compression 
> standard.
>
> The JPEG committee investigated the patent claims in 2002 and are of 
> the opinion that they were invalidated by prior art. Others have also 
> concluded that Forgent doesn't have a patent that covers JPEG. 
> Nevertheless, between 2002 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002> and 
> 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004> Forgent was able to obtain 
> about $90 million by licensing their patent to some 30 companies. In 
> April 2004 Forgent sued 31 other companies to enforce further license 
> payments. In July of the same year, a consortium of 21 large computer 
> companies filed a countersuit, with the goal of invalidating the 
> patent. However, as of July 2005, the battle is still ongoing ). 
> Surprisingly, in contrast to the other major computer companies such 
> as Sony and Philips, Microsoft has launched a major lawsuit against 
> Forgent. In principle, the Forgent patent will expire in 2006.
>
> The JPEG committee has as one of its explicit goals that their 
> standards (in particular their baseline methods) be implementable 
> without payment of license fees, and they have secured appropriate 
> license rights for their upcoming JPEG 2000 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000> standard from over 20 large 
> organizations.
>
PS: I did already write to mailing list once because of this. topic is 
"[ros-dev] libjpeg"

Best regards,

Maarten Bosma