Re: lztext and compression ratios...

Tom Lane wrote:
> JanWieck(at)t-online(dot)de (Jan Wieck) writes:
> > One thing to keep in mind is that the LZ algorithm you're
> > thinking of must be distributable under the terms of the BSD
> > license. If it's copyrighted or patented by any third party,
> > not agreeing to these terms, it's out of discussion and will
> > never appear in the Postgres source tree. Especially the LZ
> > algorithm used in GIF is one of these show-stoppers.
>
> As long as you brought it up: how sure are you that the method you've
> used is not subject to any patents? The mere fact that you learned
> it from someone who didn't patent it does not guarantee anything ---
> someone else could have invented it independently and filed for a
> patent.

Now that you ask for it: I'm not sure. Could be.

> If you can show that this method uses no ideas not found in zlib,
> then I'll feel reassured --- a good deal of legal research went into
> zlib to make sure it didn't fall foul of any patents, and zlib has
> now been around long enough that it'd be tough for anyone to get a
> new patent on one of its techniques. But if SLZ has any additional
> ideas in it, then we could be in trouble. There are an awful lot of
> compression patents.

To do so I don't know enough about the algorithms used in
zlib. Is there someone out here who could verify that if I
detailed enough describe what our compression code does?

Jan

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