Re: alternative compression algorithms?

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 5:51 AM, Tomas Vondra wrote:
> I'm a bit confused though, because I've noticed various other FOSS projects
> adopting lz4 over the past few years and I'm yet to find a project voicing
> the same concerns about patents. So either they're reckless or we're
> excessively paranoid.

Both are true, now being very careful regarding software patents
usually pays a lot. Strange things happen in the legal world.

> Also, lz4 is not the only compression algorithm available - I've done a
> bunch of tests with lz4, lz4hc, lzo and snappy, and lzo actually performed
> better than lz4 (not claiming that's a universal truth). But I suppose that
> the patent concerns are not somehow specific to lz4 but about the
> compression in general.

Some proprietary algorithms may perform even better and faster, who
knows for sure? And even if for now lzo or lz4 are better, we may find
something still better than what we think is now. In short, I still
tend to think that the right answer would be to have a dedicated set
of hooks and let people play with the compression algorithms they want
(statement stands for FPW compression as well, but that's separate
than the multivariate statistics patch).
Regards,
--
Michael