Re: 1154bis quick analysis

["Beast (Donald E. Eastlake, 3rd)" <dee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would suggest just going with the most widely used software
compression algorith, PKZIP from the IBM PC world.  I don't know
exactly what the legal situation is with it but it's incorporated into
zillions of commercial products so any licensing must be reasonable.
It is incorporated in PGP with permission.

Donald

From:  Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
To:  hansen@pegasus.att.com (t.l.hansen)
In-Reply-To:  Your message of "18 Mar 1993 16:32:00 EST."
	                  <> 
>To:  nsb@thumper.bellcore.com
>Date:        18 Mar 1993  16:32 EST
>> Yes, those compression schemes have patents behind them. Is this really any
>> worse than providing for a postscript type? Using it also has legal issues
>> behind it, but we've glossed over them because Adobe has given its
>> blessing.
>There's an important difference.  Adobe has a trademark on PostScript, but
>since they have published the specification to the language, other people
>can write PostScript-compatible interpreters, and they don't have to pay
>license fees to Adobe.  They just can't call their products "PostScript".
>
>> Has anyone considered asking Sperry (or whoever owns the patents these
>> days) whether it would give similar blessing?
>
>There are several different patents.  Sperry/Unisys owns the patent for the
>LZW compression algorithm, a variant of which is used in the UNIX 'compress'
>program, but other algorithms are claimed by others.  The LZ77 algorithms
>that some would like to use aren't covered under Sperry's patent.
>
>Some claim that the LZ77 is public domain, and some variants of LZ77 appear
>to be more effective than UNIX compress.  So maybe we don't need to ask
>permission to use it.  But it's difficult to be sure.
>
>Keith