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FLIF: Free Lossless Image Format
nickweller sends a link to an informational post about FLIF, the Free, Lossless Image Format. It claims to outperform PNG, lossless WebP, and other popular formats on any kind of image. "On photographs, PNG performs poorly while WebP, BPG and JPEG 2000 compress well (see plot on the left). On medical images, PNG and WebP perform relatively poorly while BPG and JPEG 2000 work well (see middle plot). On geographical maps, BPG and JPEG 2000 perform (extremely) poorly while while PNG and WebP work well (see plot on the right). In each of these three examples, FLIF performs well — even better than any of the others." FLIF uses progressive decoding to provide fully-formed lossy images from partial downloads in bandwidth-constrained situations. Best of all, FLIF is free software, released under the GNU GPLv3.
Yeah, doesn't this require that all software that supports the format needs to be released as GPLv3 as well?
Who's bright idea was that?
The reference implementation is under GPLv3. Everyone is of course still free to create their own implementation and license it under whichever license they want.
That was my initial thought too, but unless I'm mistaken, the GPLv3 just covers the reference implementation.
The fact that the format itself is completely patent and royalty free means that anyone can implement their own version under whatever license they choose. They just can't use the reference implementation.
http://xkcd.com/927/
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Not at all. The goal of free software is that users should have freedom.
A fork cannot change the license.
Note that in the case of Vorbis Stallman actually endorsed the BSD license
It's actually part of their general policy. For implementing things like reference implementations of unencumbered protocols and file formats, they recommend a permissive license to aid adoption:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/li...
SJW n. One who posts facts.