GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM

Twenty years ago, Terry Welch's improvement on Lempel-Ziv compression appeared in IEEE Computer magazine. The authors of unix 'compress' and the GIF standard incorporated that algorithm without realizing it was patent-pending. When the submarine patent surfaced ten years later, its new owner Unisys intimidated developers and web authors into moving away from GIFs, inspiring the creation of a better standard, though sadly still a less popular one. Today, July 7, 2004, Unisys's last LZW patent (in Canada) expires, leaving GIF once again free... almost. See, there's the small matter of IBM's patent, granted on the same algorithm, which is valid for another two years. That still has a chilling effect on GIF development, though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring. So how about it, IBM? You've got nothing to lose! Want to make a lot of geeks happy and release that final patent into the public domain?

Comments

If the poster is correct

[Timesprout]

and png truly is a better standard why should geeks care what happens to gif?

Re:If the poster is correct

[I confirm I'm not a]

Well, one reason is that, once-upon-a-time, we had to build apps for browsers that didn't support .png, so even though we could handle .pngs, we had to consider our clients who were stuck with .gifs. Thankfully, even the lowliest of browser almost supports .png these days.

Re:If the poster is correct

[DrEldarion]

There are many "better" things that, for whatever reason, just aren't as popular compared to other "inferior" things.

The PNG and GIF situation is like the OGG and MP3 situation. Sure, OGG may be better, but everyone already knows what MP3 is, has all their songs in MP3 format, has programs that know what do wo with MP3s, has players that know what MP3s are, etc. etc.

Why should we care

[ultrabot]

What would be the benefit of giving up the patent? We've already got .png, right?

What would be more interesting is suing someone over it. This patent "cold war" is annoying - it would be more beneficial to see an all-out war where large companies crumble, and the idiocy of software patents is demonstrated once and for all. Cold war only server to suffocate, and masses never learn of the damage being done, because it's so invisible.

Interesting article on how IP law conflicts with ancient chinese tradition is here

PNG

[HungSquirrel]

Internet Explorer still fails to correctly support PNG's superior transparency capabilities. Otherwise I would have adopted it much sooner in my web development. Can't run round incorporating standards into your websites that the browser that holds 95% market dominance does not support.

</TokenMicroSuckJab>

Am I missing something?

[solarmist]

Is there a reason that the writer of this topic chose to talk about the implications about having GIF open to the public rather than talk about having LZW open?

I personally think having LZW is of much more significance than GIF.

Transparency not a *required* part of PNG

[maggard]

Its become received wisdom the IE6 sux for (among other reasons) "not supporting PNG".

Wrong.

That's a techie urban-legend. The truth is that IE6 does support all required PNG features. Therefore it "supports PNG".

Yes, IE6 doesn't support PNG transparency, at least not in any easy way. However PNG transparency is an optional part of the PNG spec. That IE6 doesn't support transparency properly is unfortunate but doesn't invalidate their meeting the required PNG spec.

Furthermore as others have pointed out there are indeed work-arounds (ugly ones) that will enable reliable PNG transparency on IE6. Also as others have pointed out (including MS staffers) even if IE7 were to ship tomorrow and support PNG et al we'd still be stuck with a huge IE6-using population for years to come.

It would be great if IE, and indeed all of the browsers, were to fully meet all relevant standards. It would also be great if they were to then go on and meet more of the optional parts of those standards, including PNG transparency. However lets hold everyone's feet to the fire on these, not pick on one author's neglecting a feature many would like while they and others are still missing more fundamental required parts of specs.