Re: 5.4

[Harold Cline <hjcline(at)home.com>]

Hi Todd,

you wrote:
>As far as I
> recall, the licensing for LZW is not all that extreme (I recall a number
> of $1/end user, but I could be wrong), and given the cost of IDL, it
> doesn't seem that would "break the bank", per se.

I personally guaranty you that if it would have been this trivial, it
would still be there.  They put tools like IDL into a different category
than utilities like Adobe where they do have very reasonable fees.

Just for entertainment, you might note that our competitor has an
identical message, because they had an equally difficult time coming to
an agreement with Unisys who patented both GIF and LZW compression:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/data/7388.shtml

Harold Cline
IDL Product Manager

P.S.  You'll have a tough time blaming Kodak for this one.