LZW and legal stuff

["Michael A. Peters" <mpeters mac com>]

LZW patent is no longer valid, according to Unisys themselves.
What are the chances (I guess lawyers need to get involved etc.) of  
using LZW packages with Fedora?

For example - giflib, lzw compression kit for libtiff, etc.

It does look like the version of gd that ships with Fedora Core has gif  
functionallity added back into by the upstream developer, and Fedora  
did not patch it out - is that just an oversight or are you comfortable  
with lzw compression now that the Unisys patent has expired?

If there are no *other* legal issues, I think lzw compression kit for  
libtiff would definitely be good, the new version of gimp apparently  
has better support for raw images from various digital cameras, and lzw  
compressed tiff is a good way to share tiff images between operating  
systems at a small filesize (IE sending images to stock photo company)