Re: [pdf-devel] 3D in pdf - any plans?

[Cirilo Bernardo]

On 2/25/08, Leonard Rosenthol <address@hidden> wrote:
> Is that comment below concerning patents & GPL really true?
>

It's not that something patented cannot be implemented in GPL code,
but without appropriate permissions it cannot be included.  Thanks to
software and process patents (wherever they are enforceable, which
unfortunately includes the USA at the moment), programmers do need to
be careful about writing code which may be considered a violation of a
patent.  Let's take a specific example that's relevant to PDF1.7 -
JPEG2000 support.  The JPEG2000 "core" specifications are INTENDED to
be license and royalty-free.  If they ARE, then it is fine to code
JPEG2000-core into libgnupdf; however, you can't assume that the
JPEG's intentions were met - someone has got to provide some sort of
guarantee.  Of course in reality I'd expect something as complex as
JPEG2000-core to be implemented in another library and libgnupdf will
simply have to use or drop JPEG2000 support as appropriate.  Now the
other parts of the JPEG2000 specifications aren't even intended to be
license and royalty-free.

 In the earlier post I was making a general comment about patents and
GPL code even though the specific question was about the 3D support.
Since I don't have time to review the relevant patent issues I was
just pointing out that people have to be careful implementing these
things.  I think it's an incredible nuisance; all software patents
should simply be nullified; the computer industry doesn't have the
time and money to waste on patent issues.

- Cirilo