Interview with Don Marti

mpawlo writes "I just picked Don Marti's brain in a short interview published by Greplaw. Don Marti is the editor of LinuxJournal and the mastermind behind the Burnallgifs campaign. He has strong views on free software, software patentability and the freedom of the Internet. Marti should personally be featured in any encyclopedia under 'geektivism' and the brief interview may be of interest to Slashdotters not yet familiar with Mr Marti."

Comments

I love Don Marti!

[jeramybsmith]

His cartoons in Mad magazine were the best!

Re:I love Don Marti!

[Raiford]

I guess this humor was just enough over the head to require an oxygen mask ...

Burn all gifs, huh?

[$carab]

Curious how 3 out of 4 images on the page are gifs.....Sorta like that Mandrake page explaining GNU, where the GNU gnu image is a gif....

Hypocrisy anyone?

Re:Burn all gifs, huh?

[Cyph]

Quoting the article:


# Greplaw still uses GIFs. What should we do instead?

Use PNG or JPEG images, depending on which gives you the best quality and image size. Almost all browsers in use today support both.

I don't think the interview was about promoting the BurnAllGifs campaign, it was more about finding out what makes Don Marti tick. :)

Re:Burn all gifs, huh?

[blakestah]

The LZW compression algorithm is patented. This is used in, for example, UNIX compress. In response to this, GNU wrote gzip for compression. GIF images also use the LZW algorithm.

Unisys owns licensing rights to the LZW patent. They typically go to web site operators (large ones), and ask them to pay licensing fees, or prove that all the GIFs they serve came from licensed programs. Kinda creepy. Of course, none of the enforcement came until GIFs were widely used.

In response, a group of open source hackers wrote the png spec, which uses the gzip compression technique. Also, postscript and pdf added gzip compression (flate compression) in addition to LZW compression, so that people could make pdfs without worrying about patent licensing.

The GIF patent will expire in less than a year, I think. It is still WIDELY used. However, development has continued at full speed on png formats, and has halted on GIFs. Even when they become legal, the next generation of software will use pngs instead (because the DEVELOPMENT stopped, not because it "used to be patented").

Re:Burn all gifs, huh?

[Joe Tie.]

_Nobody_ uses browsers like Netscape or IE or Opera or Mozilla or any of the other browsers that support png.

IE (for windows) and png support are two things I very rarely see in the same sentence unless poor is in there as well somewhere. Though I'm more annoyed by it's total lack of mng support than it half assed png support.

Re:Burn all gifs, huh?

[*xpenguin*]

The GIF patent will expire in less than a year, I think.

The GIF patent expires June 20, 2003 and is US patent 4,558,302.

I'm no expert on graphical formats

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

but if I wanted to get rid of gifs used in an application I support, I would have to replace them with an animated, lightweight (ie/ not flash) solution

What would work?

(I'm not asking Don Marti, I read the header, unlike all the rest asking questions when it's actually a link to an interview that already took place. I'm asking the rest of you Slashdot readers. Just thought I'd clarify that. God I'm bored right now.)

Re:I'm no expert on graphical formats

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Answering my own question here - MNG format appears to be an alternative, but MSIE doesn't seem to support it out-of-the box.

Since 99% of my users are running IE, that's a bit annoying :\

Burn All Gifs Mini-HOWTO

[dananderson]

For background information on BurnAllGIFs.ORG, see http://burnallgifs.org The software section is especially valuable.

I use ESR's gif2png to convert my legacy GIF files to PNG for web use. I provide Solaris SPARC and x86 packages (Linux packages are available elsewhere).

A few comments

[Elbereth]

1) As a few anonymous cowards have asked, "Who is Don Marti, and why should I care about his opinions?" I don't really see why this is headline news. Most of probably don't care about him, and his opinions are not very interesting or revolutionary. In short, he's just a regular guy who got interviewed. If I were a little more cynical, I might even suggest that this was a cheap ploy to get a few thousands hits on someone's banner ads.

2) Quoting from the article:

Software is a good thing because in software, a small investment can create and manage great complexity. When you impose the same transaction costs on software as on hardware, much useful software that could otherwise have been created does not exist. We are seeing this today in the field of video compression. The MPEG patent licensing mess is excluding everyone except for large, well-funded corporations from creating innovative new video-related software.

I don't follow this. What MPEG patent licensing mess? There is none. If you want to use an algorithm developed by someone else, at great expense, you follow their rules. If you want to use their algorithm for free... then, I'm sorry, you'll just have to come up with your own algorithm. And when you're done, don't forget to give it away for free.

3) Uhhh... this guy has what qualifications to be talking about law and interpreting the Constitution? I didn't see anything in his bio about being a lawyer.

Re:A few comments

[abe ferlman]

If you want to use an algorithm developed by someone else, at great expense, you follow their rules.

Oh please.

That boils down to "If you want to develop your own algorithm, you'd better make sure it has nothing in common with a million others developed at "great expense" or else follow their rules," which is an amazing hindrance to innovation. Furthermore, algorithms are mathematical constructs and should not be owned any more than arithmetical constructions can be owned.

And you have to be a constitutional scholar to interpret the constitution?? What is this, a secret priesthood where the word of god is written on stone tablets that only the scribes can interpret? Constitutional theorists spend their lives thinking about fine points and hard cases, but this ain't one of 'em. The intention and spirit of the references to the LIMITED monopoly over ideas in the constitution is clear enough for any of us who are bound to follow it to understand.

What's hard to understand is how money could have so thoroughly corrupted such a well-intentioned process.

You seem overly concerned with making sure people who spend a lot of money make a profit, and not nearly concerned enough that the intellectual commons of our society is not plundered by teh interests of capital.

Re:A few comments

[Ed Avis]

The trouble is that independent creation is no defence to patent infringement, so if you did write your own algorithm you could still be sued if it had elements in common with the patent filed. I don't know about the MPEG patent in particular, but in many cases software patents are so broad you cannot write any algorithm that doesn't infringe. They become a government-granted monopoly on the whole application area.

This is one of the reasons why copyright is a better fit for software than patents: if you create something independently, without looking at another's code, you cannot infringe the copyright.

Re:Bullshit

[blakestah]

GIF files are not covered by the patent. There is no risk in distributing GIF files or in using the GIF name. According to a CompuServe spokesperson, "Recent discussions of GIF taxes and fees are totally without merit. For people who view GIF images, who keep GIF images on servers, or who are creating GIF images for distribution, the recent licensing discussions have no effect on their activities."

I think the most critical aspect of that article occurs earlier, where it says
Nothing in this article should be regarded as legal counsel. If you require legal or other expert assistance, you should consult a professional advisor.

Also, the article is wrong. Unisys now claims that distributing GIFs requires making a copy of a file that requires the LZW algorithm. Thus, it is also patent protected. So far, they've done a pretty good business collecting fees from web site operators.

Re:Offtopic, but...

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

I pronounce it like you (Gif{!t}), but you can't really argue with those who pronounce it "jif" since this is the soundex of the first two letters of "gigolo" amongst other words.

An Interview with a Dry Martini?

[tiny69]

Damn, when I first read it I thought it said an Interview with a Dry Martini. I don't know about you, but the second one sounds much more enjoyable.

See him live! Feb. 4th

[Bill Kendrick]

Don's coming to the Linux Users' Group of Davis, out here near Sacramento, on February 4th.