[fpc-pascal] fpimage reader for jpeg2000

[Jonas Maebe]

On 12 Jun 2012, at 20:07, Mattias Gaertner wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:03:40 +0200
> Florian Klaempfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> 
>> Am 11.06.2012 12:03, schrieb Mattias Gaertner:
>>> 
>>> Has someone already implemented a fpimage reader for jpeg2000?
>> 
>> Probably not due to the patent situation?
> 
> I guess that's a minor:
> http://www.jpeg.org/faq.phtml?action=show_answer&question_id=q3f042a68b1081

The problem is that this "fee-free" patent license only applies to using those patented algorithms for jpeg2000 encoding/decoding. This means that you cannot use such code together with e.g. GPL code, since the GPL requires that the recipient can use/adapt the result for any reason and any purpose. You don't have the ability to grant those rights to the recipients.

A BSD-licensed implementation might be possible, but I'm not 100% sure about how that would work either (since that license also grants the recipient the right to do whatever they want with the code, as long as they keep the copyright notice intact -- which again is not a license you can grant due to the patent restrictions).

I guess you'd need to use some specific license for such code, and then clearly mark with which other licenses the code is (in)compatible.


Jonas