On the earlier comment thread(s) about Flash, Photoshop, etc. the patent issues with respect to GIFs were mentioned. A website called Burn All GIFs discusses this. In a nutshell, a particular company owned the compression tech behind GIFs and could potentially sue every website with a dancing hamster or viking kitten raising a sword. So we should, therefore, purge our sites of all GIFs in protest. But the patents affecting GIFs expired in the US in 2003 and everywhere else in 2004, so what's the problem? I can't keep track of all the moral issues I'm supposedly on the wrong side of. PNGs, the alternative to GIFs, are made with Microsoft programs (animated PNGs, anyway)--that's better? When web browsers stop recognizing GIFs we'll all move to something else. Some will spend years of their lives converting their GIFs to PNGs or whatever--now because it's the "right thing to do" or in the future because nothing will recognize GIFs. You can go insane thinking about this stuff.
Update, from the comments (well, my comment): They really should take the "Burn All GIFS" page down. Since it's not blog style, it's difficult to tell where the rabble rousing anti-GIF rhetoric stops and "never mind, the patent's expired" message starts. The website is still pushing the "switch to PNG or you will feel the licking flames of hellfire" message really strongly.
After just catching up on the earlier very interesting thread I think your point here is the most salient. Perhaps we're all insane already and I'm sure we're all on the wrong side morally. In reading all the posts what's clear is that there are really many ways to skin a cat. Hopefully someone reading this blog will be inspired to write software that will convert any old file type past, present, and future into any other file type of our choosing.
all the best stuff just wafts off into the atmosphere sooner or later
Forgent is a company trying to extract money for a patent related to jpegs. I haven't read the patent, but I used to work with the inventors.
Forgent is the remains of a company called V-tech, who bought the remains of a company called Compression Labs (aka CLI) back in the nineties, which had been a pioneer in the field of video compression. Forgent has no commercial activities, so they are immune to the normal commercial pressures to "swap" patent rights. All they need to worry about is extracting the maximum money from the deepest pockets. And ... they're going after retroactive violations.
Holders of "fundamental" patents who have nothing to lose are dangerous. Opensource is a countervailing influence, however, jpeg was developed in a transparent standards process.
I have a rant about CLI's questionable management practices as an underlying cause of some of the jpeg issues, but I'll stifle myself for now.
From memory, so I could be wrong, but I think the Burn all Gifs site is from before the patents (unisys?) expired. Everything is fine now as far as I know concerning gifs. There are technical reasons to move to .pngs (alpha channel transparency seems like the big one) but no legal or ethical reasons that I know of. So maybe one less thing to go insane over.
According to the Burn All GIFs page's FAQ, Forgent got nowhere with the jpeg claims. They really should take Burn All GIFS down. Since the page is not blog style, it's difficult to tell where the rabble rousing anti-GIF rhetoric stops and "never mind, the patent's expired" starts. The page is still pushing the "switch to PNG or you will feel the licking flames of hellfire" message really strongly.
mark, to your point about CLI as having one function of buying and holding a patent (rather than developing tools or applications or whatever), is this a similar situation to NTP Inc, who just successfully settled its lawsuit with RIM (blackberry folks)
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On the earlier comment thread(s) about Flash, Photoshop, etc. the patent issues with respect to GIFs were mentioned. A website called Burn All GIFs discusses this. In a nutshell, a particular company owned the compression tech behind GIFs and could potentially sue every website with a dancing hamster or viking kitten raising a sword. So we should, therefore, purge our sites of all GIFs in protest. But the patents affecting GIFs expired in the US in 2003 and everywhere else in 2004, so what's the problem? I can't keep track of all the moral issues I'm supposedly on the wrong side of. PNGs, the alternative to GIFs, are made with Microsoft programs (animated PNGs, anyway)--that's better? When web browsers stop recognizing GIFs we'll all move to something else. Some will spend years of their lives converting their GIFs to PNGs or whatever--now because it's the "right thing to do" or in the future because nothing will recognize GIFs. You can go insane thinking about this stuff.
Update, from the comments (well, my comment): They really should take the "Burn All GIFS" page down. Since it's not blog style, it's difficult to tell where the rabble rousing anti-GIF rhetoric stops and "never mind, the patent's expired" message starts. The website is still pushing the "switch to PNG or you will feel the licking flames of hellfire" message really strongly.
- tom moody 4-03-2006 6:08 am
After just catching up on the earlier very interesting thread I think your point here is the most salient. Perhaps we're all insane already and I'm sure we're all on the wrong side morally. In reading all the posts what's clear is that there are really many ways to skin a cat. Hopefully someone reading this blog will be inspired to write software that will convert any old file type past, present, and future into any other file type of our choosing.
- Aaron Yassin (guest) 4-03-2006 6:40 am
all the best stuff just wafts off into the atmosphere sooner or later
- Thor Johnson (guest) 4-03-2006 8:26 am
Forgent is a company trying to extract money for a patent related to jpegs. I haven't read the patent, but I used to work with the inventors.
Forgent is the remains of a company called V-tech, who bought the remains of a company called Compression Labs (aka CLI) back in the nineties, which had been a pioneer in the field of video compression. Forgent has no commercial activities, so they are immune to the normal commercial pressures to "swap" patent rights. All they need to worry about is extracting the maximum money from the deepest pockets. And ... they're going after retroactive violations.
Holders of "fundamental" patents who have nothing to lose are dangerous. Opensource is a countervailing influence, however, jpeg was developed in a transparent standards process.
I have a rant about CLI's questionable management practices as an underlying cause of some of the jpeg issues, but I'll stifle myself for now.
- mark 4-03-2006 6:15 pm
From memory, so I could be wrong, but I think the Burn all Gifs site is from before the patents (unisys?) expired. Everything is fine now as far as I know concerning gifs. There are technical reasons to move to .pngs (alpha channel transparency seems like the big one) but no legal or ethical reasons that I know of. So maybe one less thing to go insane over.
- jim 4-03-2006 9:04 pm
According to the Burn All GIFs page's FAQ, Forgent got nowhere with the jpeg claims. They really should take Burn All GIFS down. Since the page is not blog style, it's difficult to tell where the rabble rousing anti-GIF rhetoric stops and "never mind, the patent's expired" starts. The page is still pushing the "switch to PNG or you will feel the licking flames of hellfire" message really strongly.
- tom moody 4-03-2006 9:27 pm
mark, to your point about CLI as having one function of buying and holding a patent (rather than developing tools or applications or whatever), is this a similar situation to NTP Inc, who just successfully settled its lawsuit with RIM (blackberry folks)
- L.M. 4-04-2006 12:10 am