![]() I have updated the article to illustrate that there really is no definitive way of pronouncing Gif, and that there are in fact more pronunciations than the two choices put forward. The word is often said with the hard g but it supposed to be said like it was spelled jiff. I believe the last person to edit over the way to say gif is wrong. I dunno if that was in response to actual threats or just the knowlage they could happen though. JeffW 00:45, 16 February 2006 (UTC) Well there was the replacement of compress with gzip by gnu. At least I never heard of any controversy over any other use of the patent. It was an LZW patent, but the controversy was exclusively on the use of that patent in GIFs. JeffW 21:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC) If the patent info is to be localised anywhere it should probablly be at LZW though i'd like to see at least a summary and any gif specific info kept here. JeffW 21:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)Īlso merged info from the Unisys page. I added a sentence from the LZW page about gzip since that wasn't covered here, but the discussion on the patent page in large part contradicts what is on this page which seems more neutral, so I didn't retain any of that information. To do that I removed the discussion from List of software patents and LZW and replaced them with links to GIF#Unisys and LZW patent enforcement. I tried to localize the discussion of the Unisys LZW patent to this page. It seems the last poster here has written a general anti-gif rant rather than posting stuff in appropriate sections as for the patent issue that is now pretty much dead and burried (there is the IBM patent but that has never been enforced and i'm pretty sure that the unisys patent would be rather strong prior art against it). It pretends to be a VIDEO compressor as well!.The interlacing takes too long to render readable text.Its alpha channel is just one transparent palette entry.Its many variations make it hard to implement.(sigh) and error correction has never been much a part of most image files, either. now, if only there was an RLE GIF compression format. Oh, and 256 colour palette limitation is actually appropriate for an indexed palette graphic file format. That's the wonderful thing about standards. Patent 4558302), who have been known to charge licensing fees to coders who write software to maniuplate GIFs. The seventh reason is that the compression algorithm it uses is patented by Unisys (under U.S. Now, all sorts of different formats are being used. Then, two graphics file formats covered most anything you wanted to do (except vector images). However, before Unisys sprung its booby trap on the Web, the GIF format(s) were a Good Thing, nicely complementing the JPEG format. Thus, the compressed GIF format is a TOOL OF EVIL!!! (why don't Microsoft have anything to do with it?) Unisys waited until GIF was a de facto standard on the Web before springing license fees on people. Most people who make amateur animated GIFs don't do any optimisations, making them hideous to use. In its animated form, GIF seems to be used mainly for annoying, bandwidth-intensive banner ads and unnecessary animated junk on websites, like rotating text headings, flashing bullets and obnoxious animated icons.Īnimated GIFs take up lots and lots of CPU cycles in Netscape for some reason. LZW-compressed GIFs, but any GIF decoder can decode them just the The images so generated are larger than traditional You can also use the -nolzw option on ppmtogif to avoid using the LZW Pngtopnm, pnmtopng), which was developed with a primary purpose of not The following Netpbm components may be restricted by this patent:Ī good substitute for GIF if the patents are a problem is PNG (see Neither company has ever enforced the patent against trivial users ofįor information from another perspective, see. Owns a patent that may cover the GIF tools. Unisys owns a patent on LZW compression, which is used by ppmtogif,Īnd maybe on LZW decompression, which is used by giftoppm. It is accompagnied by a file COPYRIGHT.PATENT, which gives the following information: The GNU netpbm package contains about two hundred file converters for graphical file formats. Just because Unisys does not go after each and every instance of patent infringement does not mean they won't go after you.-branko If Unisys only mentions that they are asking licensing fees for LZW, and does not specifically mention libre or gratis software, then this means that Unisys is expecting money for ALL use of LZW, even in libre and gratis software. Is this a Unisys page? If not, it can hardly be used as a source for the statement that the algorithm can be used freely for non-commercial software.-brankoĪ Unisys page doesn't mention this but the page is not specifically addressing free software. ![]() A source which states that the algorithm for creating GIFs can be freely used for non-commercial software:
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