Date:  Sat, 01 Jun 2002 10:01:46 -0400
From:  madodelatptdprolog.net
Subject:  [VOICENWS] OT:  GIF files... update

From: rsteineratvisi.com (Richard Steiner) 

Unisys has a patent on the LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression method, not
the GIF format, and they registered and received that patent in the USA
well before the folks at CompuServe decided to create their popular GIF
format using that particular compression algorithm. 

This has nothing to do with copyright law at all -- CompuServe simply did
not do the appropriate research before using the algorithm in its Graphics
Interchange Format, and while Unisys Corporation has acted in an extremely
greedy manner (IMO), the whole thing is quite legal.  There is no
"loophole" involved, just a company which is (fairly or unfairly)
enforcing its rights to a software patent under US law.

Whether or not software patents are a good thing is another question...

See the following link for more information:

  http://www.cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127giflzw.html

-- 
 -Rich Steiner >>>---> http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner >>>---> Eden Prairie, MN
    OS/2 + BeOS + Linux + Win95 + DOS + PC/GEOS = PC Hobbyist Heaven! :-)
        Applications programmer (13 yrs) actively seeking employment.
             See web site in my signature for current resume.

[Moderator note: Just a clarification, since this off topic post has generated more responses then anything on this list in ages.  Its good to see a few people actually read these posts. :-)  Neither the VOICE Newsletter nor the VOICE site has banned the use of Gif images, but we now use PNG whenever it proves more suitable (especially in regard to file size). In the past we have received complaints from people who are using old browsers that can't view PNGs.  VOICE has taken great pains to remain backward compatible, but there comes a time when that is no longer realistic.  We have not reached that point yet, but at some point PNG may become our preferred image format.  I think it still comes down to the fact that the use of proprietary formats is a bad idea frankly because you never know what the legal consequences may be. 

Followups might be better directed to generalatos2voice.org, since feedbackatos2voice.org only comes to me and I can't answer all the mail personally.  To subscribe to that mailing list see http://www.os2voice.org/mailinglists.html ]

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