https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=342704#c1
--- Comment #1 from Markus Kuhn 2007-11-19 09:40:01 MST ---
There are two entirely separate license questions here: copyright and patents.
Copyright:
I hold the sole copyright in the JBIG-KIT
(http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/) library. I make it available either
freely under the GPL (note: *not* the LGPL!) or, for a one-off payment to the
University of Cambridge technology-transfer office, under a commercial license
that permits proprietary modifications and linking with proprietary (non-GPL)
code. Summery: if you want to link your code with JBIG-KIT, either make sure
all your linked remaining code complies with the license conditions of the GPL,
or buy a commercial license (which is much cheaper than what Lucent will charge
you for their patent licenses). Several large printer manufacturers have done
the latter.
Patents:
IBM, Lucent and a few other companies might hold or enforce patents that cover
aspects of the JBIG algorithm. My understanding of this subject is summarized
at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/patents.html
Neither my GPL license nor our commercial license for JBIG-KIT includes
licenses for any patents that may be applicable to the JBIG standard. So users
of JBIG-KIT are still themselves responsible to get the relevant patent
licenses from the relevant patent holders. Which licenses you need might
depends on your country and use (e.g., my non-expert understanding is that
non-commercial use does not require any patent licenses in Germany, but that
may not be the case in , for instance, the U.S.).
I understand that IBM may have granted a free general license of their relevant
patents to anyone who wants to use JBIG in some letter deposited with ISO or
ITU-T, but I do not know whether the same is the case for other holders of
potentially relevant patents.
I have yet to look at hplip before I can comment on what happened there. Is a
HP product? In which case, they most likely would have all the necessary
licenses.
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