Re: Compression Library and Usages

On mån, 2010-01-11 at 22:39 -0500, Merlin Moncure wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 7:54 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> > Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
> >> plus, it looks like that most of the patents have either expired, or
> >> are about to expire.  lzo is used all over the place, including the
> >> linux kernel...i think the burden of proof rests with anyone claiming
> >> there are patent problems, not the other way around.  lzo is also gpl
> >> so we can't use it :D.  regarding fastlz and patents, who knows?  I'm
> >> curious...does anyone know of a case where a high profile open source
> >> project was found to be violating a patent?
> >
> > You have got that 100% backwards.  We are not going to bet the survival
> > of the Postgres project on whether we can get away with violating
> > somebody's patent.
> 
> I was only talking about the specific case of lzo, which is used
> absolutely everywhere (not that this means anything but...).

I think this compression business warrants a FAQ entry by now:

N a) Why don't you use compression library X?

Many compression libraries have an unclear patent situation, and the
potential benefits using them do not appear to outweigh that risk.

N b) But LZO cannot possibly have any relevant patents on it because a
lot of open-source software uses it.

The LZO library is licensed under the GPL, so we can't use it.