Richard Stallman wrote:
Whether distributing third party libraries from ftp.gnu.org is
a good idea, or allowable, is a different question.
If it is just a few libraries, it is ok as long as we check
their licenses carefully to make sure we do not violate them.
OK. Here is the license for libxpm, which is the most important for the
color versions of the tool-bar and other images that are a standard part
of Emacs. I think including just this library is enough to satisfy most
users, but that is open to discussion. If others think JPEG, PNG, TIFF
and GIF support are important enough to include, we can look at those
licenses and consider patent issues (for GIF at least, I don't think the
patents have expired in all jurisdictions yet) separately.