CentOS - Jul 2010 - freetype bytecode interpreter

It may yet be too early to get a definite answer about this, but I'm
wondering what the status of the formerly patented bytecode interpreter
in freetype will be in RHEL/Centos 6 and possibly future updates to
RHEL/Centos 5.

The patent on the technology has apparently now expired.
http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html and
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/07/19/1524250/FreeType-Project-Cheers-TrueType-Patent-Expiration

Effective with freetype 2.4 the technology will enabled by default at
the freetype website.  I just checked and the version in the RHEL 6 beta
appears to be 2.3.11


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com

On Mon, 19 Jul 2010, Frank Cox wrote:
> It may yet be too early to get a definite answer about this, but I'm
> wondering what the status of the formerly patented bytecode interpreter
> in freetype will be in RHEL/Centos 6 and possibly future updates to
> RHEL/Centos 5.
CentOS just rebuilds sources to conform to certain goals -- 
the 'upgrades / freshenings' request department is on a list 
run by the upstream

 	https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv6-beta-list

That said, I saw speculation picked up in a aggregator run by 
Infoworld <?> that the RHEL 6 stabilization was going slower 
than expected and that a gold by EOY was a new target date.

While this may induce a reluctance to change matters too 
much, a closer to the 'leaf node' package such as freetype may 
be 'doable' if you ask, and as I recall, RFE it in their 
Bugzilla; requests with working caldidates agains their public 
beta may also change how such a request is viewed [based upon 
my years of 'kremlinology' as to Raleigh]

-- Russ herrold