From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 3 21:40:54 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3684A10656B3 for ; Sun, 3 Apr 2011 21:40:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from brett@lariat.net) Received: from lariat.net (lariat.net [66.119.58.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B89408FC1A for ; Sun, 3 Apr 2011 21:40:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from WildRover.lariat.net (IDENT:ppp1000.lariat.net@lariat.net [66.119.58.2]) by lariat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA27914 for ; Sun, 3 Apr 2011 15:08:29 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <201104032108.PAA27914@lariat.net> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:56:00 -0600 To: questions@freebsd.org From: Brett Glass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Cc: Subject: Last Stacker patent expires May 14th X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:40:54 -0000 Everyone: The last of the Stac data compression patents, granted in 1991, expires on May 14th of this year. For a long time, all implementations of PPP for FreeBSD have had stubs for the Stac compression methods (in particular, MPPC; see, for example, /sys/netgraph/mppc.c) and there's now absolutely no reason for them to do so anymore. (Linux, in fact, has jumped the gun and has compression code available.) Shall we start coding? --Brett Glass