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Unisys Not Suing (most) Webmasters for Using GIFs
The Real Unisys GIF Deal
According to
Mark Starr, General Patent and Technology Counsel for Unisys, if the GIFs on your Web site were created with software that is licensed by Unisys, you are fine. Nobody at Unisys is going to try to get $5000 or even $0.50 out of you. Period.
And, Starr added, virtually all of the major, heavily-used, commercial graphics programs from what he calls "reputable companies" (e.g. Adobe, Corel, JASC, Macromedia, Microsoft, AOL/Netscape, etc.) are licensed by Unisys. He said that even the "included" software packaged with most scanners and digital cameras is licensed. Use it, create all the GIFs you want with it, post those GIFs to your heart's content, and relax. Unisys will not come after you.
But...
And it's a big but, too. If you use GIF graphics created with certain freeware programs, and your chosen program uses LZW compression to create GIFs without a license to use it, you may be violating a Unisys patent. How would Unisys know what software you used to create a particular GIF? Starr says they'll ask you, and, he says, "...assuming we made an inquiry, we would expect a Web site operator to tell us what he used." I did not ask, "What if someone creates a GIF using licensed software that came with a scanner, then modifies that image with the GIMP or another freeware program?" I really didn't want to know the answer to this question; all of my GIFs have passed through at least one Unisys-licensed program at some point, so if I am asked I can honestly say that they were created (at least partially) in accordance with the Unisys patent.
I specifically asked Starr about the GIMP. He had not heard of it, but said, "We give hundreds of licenses away to non-commercial, non-profit entities. We do not give our technology away to for-profit entities." The rub here is that if you use the GIMP - which was created by a non-profit group - to create GIF graphics for a non-commercial site, you're probably fine, but if you use it to create GIF graphics for a Web site that is intended to make a profit, Unisys wants a cut of the action. How much? E-mail them and ask. And if you want to write a program that incorporates LZW compression technology in its code base, you'd better ask, because you'll be in trouble if you don't - and you may be in trouble even if you do, according to these folks, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish we won't get into today.
Do not expect Unisys to release LZW technology under the GPL anytime soon. Unisys is not a free software booster. Starr said, "We do not use freeware in our own products as a matter of policy. It could violate someone's license, it could be trash. Anyone who uses freeware does so at their own risk."
Starr also said, "We have thought of a [GIF patent] giveway, but it's not in the best interests of our shareholders..." He does not believe the potential PR value involved in giving LZW technology away is worth much, either. He said, "We've [given free licenses to] hundreds of non-profit organizations, schools, and governments, but we haven't gotten much good publicity over it."
And, according to Starr, there are plenty of good reasons a company like Unisys should not allow its patented technology to be used for free, even in free software. He specifically described two common situations:
1) A company creates a $200,000 CAD package - then gives away a "free plug-in" that includes LZW. Should not Unisys charge a royalty under these circumstances? Isn't the freeness of the plug-in package that includes LZW somewhat of a sham, possibly made that way specifically to avoid paying royalties to Unisys?
2) A company that sells hardware of some sort (Starr mentioned "Japanese digital camera manufacturers" here) but includes accompanying software "free." Again, to Unisys this freeness is strictly bogus, and they want royalties on the "free" software that comes with the non-free hardware if that software uses LZW technology in any way.
That's Their Story and They're Sticking to It
The stack of e-mails Unisys has gotten this week from Slashdot readers and other free software boosters who disagree with the Unisys GIF patent policy hasn't done much to change Starr's mind. He and Unisys PR dude Oliver Picher both described the e-mail tirades with words like vile, vulgar, obscene, disgusting, and distasteful. Apparently, the dregs of the Open Source Community came out of the woodwork in full force, and, as usual, pissed off the people whose minds they might have had a chance to change if they had exercised a little courtesy.
Those of you who sent those e-mails don't need to apologize. I already did, profusely, on your behalf. And the person to whom I apologized most humbly was not Starr, but Cheryl, the low-paid secretary who had to read all the filth.
Cheryl does not set Unisys policy, and she does not own stock in the company, but she is the person whose job it is to read all the abusive e-mail sent to Unisys via the e-mail address on the relevant corporate Web page. All you do when you send her obscenities is make her - and by extension, her boss, Mark Starr - think that Open Source advocates are crackpots and idiots. But I am going to cut this potential tirade short, because Rob Malda has already given you a similar lecture, Eric S. Raymond has given it, Bruce Perens has given it, and Richard M. Stallman has given it so many times that he probably mumbles it in his sleep.
The Bottom Line
Unisys is unlikely to change its corporate position regarding free software in the near future (especially if they get attacked instead of asked politely) and they have the patent on LZW-compressed GIFs and you don't, so if you're going to use their technology you must play by their rules until or unless software patent laws in the U.S. get a radical makeover. Meanwhile, if you want to use LZW-compressed GIFs on your Intranet or public Web site, and you created them with a Unisys-licensed piece of software, no one from Unisys is going to come around and demand money from you.
And if you plan to create - or have already created - free image-processing software that uses Unisys-patented LZW technology, you might want to ask the company, very politely, for a giveaway license that would cover non-commercial use of your product. I suspect that Mr. Starr (who has final judgement in such matters) might just give you one if you approach him correctly and you manage to convince him that you aren't trying to burn Unisys with some sort of bogus giveaway deal that is really meant to make you or your program's users rich while denying Unisys shareholders the licensing fees that - like it or not - they are legally entitled to collect if you try to earn a profit from your use of their intellectual property.
FYI... /.
I sent email to Peter Mattis asking him to drop
a note regarding The GIMP and LZW licensing. We'll see...
Peace of mind isn't at all superficial to technical work, it's the whole thing.
nope it's more like, jpeg is the only imageformat in wide use, which does not have transparency.
png, tiff, xcf and psd all have it. in fact their trancparency (alpha channel) is a lot better than gifs.
(the only problem is, that netscape doesn't yet support the png alpha channel)
greetings, eMBee.
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
How about an Apache module that converts them on the fly if it detects anyone coming from the unisys.com ;-)
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Whatever people feel about Unisys and their actions it is highly immature and not to mention destructive to the image of open source advocates to flame a company that doesn't meet your required licencing standards.
There are patents. There are copyrights. There are trademarks. There are lawyers. Folk generally don't favor laws that they feel don't favor them. Sometimes lawyers defend one. It may be important to have a trademark, and it is important to be able to rely on one. Copyrights defend a particular method of expression. They used to be a great idea. They've been extended until they have become oppressive to the majority of software developers, more oppressive than helpful. So the majority of software developers don't support them.
<rant>The patent system in this country (the usa) is vile. It has been preverted from it's legitimate constitutional purpose into a mechanism for large organizations to suppress small organizations without effective response. The acceptable patents are so vague that only lawyers can even guess what the judge will think. Lawyers, not folk skilled in the art.</rant>
The patents were supposed to support the development of the engineering arts, and for awhile they did. This started going awry around the time of WWI (or possibly earlier). As technical skills became more specialized, the patent clerks became more and more in the dark about what a patent was describing, so they stopped requiring that the patent make any kind of sense before granting it. So basically, a patent turned into a license to sue people for something that nobody really understood, and the decision would be made by a judge skilled primarily in legal procedures. He would try to figure out whether the patent was valid. So lawyers specialized in writing patents that judges would accept, but which were so broad that they covered as much as possible, and so vague that you couldn't be sure you weren't infringing. This trend has now continued for over 6 decades. During the 1960-70s (there were a series of decisions, I forget the critical dates) it was first decided that mathematical processes could be patented if they were embedded in a physical form, and then this was generalized until now you could probably patent a book, if you did it just right. The one good feature of patents is that they still have a relatively short lifetime.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I believe the discussion about licensing and software patents is going in the wrong direction. We are creating two very religious sides: One side wants a patent on everything to increase profit while the other side hates software patents. Sit down and think about it. The reality is that we have software patents and I believe we should at least support those companies who allow open sourced implementation of their patents so that the free world can benefit from them. What is so wrong with buying a version of Linux that specifically has a set of open source software that requires royalties? It would still be cheaper and would still have the higher quality of open source development. It could be set up as a set of libraries that contain those algorithms (MP3, DVD decoding, FAX, soft modem, ...) that require a per station license. The libraries could be developed openly and the software using those algorithms of course, too. Insisting on license fees for GIF is pretty pointless if you look at all the alternatives. It makes perfect sense though for other things.
The Mosaic guys screwed up. And then people kept repeating their mistake because defacto standards are hard to lose.
Word was already out about the LZW patent problem in the late 80s when the algorithm was explained in DDJ and someone wrote in about it being patented, and then the whole software patent debate flared up. It was a big buzz and a hot topic; there was no way to miss it.
Anyone working with GIF (especially back then, when libraries were less common, and you really had to get your hands dirty) knew that it used LZW. For some reason, the Mosaic guys used GIF anyway, even though they should have known better. Who knows why? Ask Andresson, I guess.
Subsequent web browsers then had to do support everything Mosaic did, including the braindead stuff like the IMG tag and GIFs. When, in late '94, Unisys started making noise again about GIFs on the WWW, that should have been the beginning of the end. The PNG group started up lightning fast and by the end of 95, there was really no reason why browsers should not have supported PNG, so that GIF could begin to get phased out.
Many browsers did. Especially as pnglib matured, it just became so damned easy to support PNG. But the "big two" didn't. They dragged their feet. By '96 they still didn't support it. By '97 they still didn't support it. By '98 they still didn't support it. By '99 they still didn't support it well. Why? Ask Andresson and Bill Gates, I guess.
The real problem is that 90% of the people are using stone knives and bear skins for browsing the web, and the major web browser makers aren't putting any effort into improving their products, and yet people still continue to download them and use them anyway! It's not going to change until more sites start using PNG and users start screaming for better support in the browsers.
Even the Linux guys... why are you using Netscape? The Linux communuty all relying on a closed-source commercial web browser is really weird. Doesn't anyone else notice how anomalous it is? Why hasn't the open source community come up with a modern browser? I guess it's just laziness. It's hard to justify the effort when Netscape works "good enough" for most people. Maybe after enough GIF troubles, people will change their mind about whether it's really "good enough" after all.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The patent in question, US4558302 I think, was filed in 1983 and issued in 1985. Maybe Unisys is trying to get their last few bucks out of it, before the 17 year time limit...
Algorithms, etc. were considered unpatentable until some court decisions during the 60s-70s in regard to, I believe, Intel 4004 chips. Then it was decided that if an algorithm was implemented in hardware that it could be patented. My impression is that the extensions from there were based on court decisions rather than on changes in the law. If so, then officially (as the law is written) a mathematical process is still unpatentable, but in practice judicial case history has developed that it is patentable (at least if you express it physically..I wonder if writing would count?).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> General advice for /. morons: whenver in doubt > of some philosophical issue, try to follow
> Richard Stallman's views.
That being that acting in a peurile way towards businesses you wish to influence is daft.
If people were just emailing Unisys to complain and not looking to see them remedy their position then they deserve all they work towards - nothing.
Has anyone attempted to migrate to PNG? What did it take? I would like to create a PHP script to detect the browser and deliver a PNG or a GIF based upon browser support for the format. Has anyone done anything like this? Is there sufficient support for PNG in _any_ browser to even make this useful? True alpha channel support would be very nice but not if .001% of my visitors can experience it.
I don' think it's appropriate for one person to "apologize" on behalf of slashdot for "abusive" emails.
At this point, I think we already know that rich corporations have underpaid individuals whose job is to slog through all the emails and correspondence, however abusive.
There are two major imaging standards on the WWW. One is free (jpeg), the other is not (gif). When gif was created, Compuserve was too busy to inform us that GIF included some patented technology, and sooner or later, some snot nosed company was going to demand royalties for it. GIF should be replaced by PNG, and good place to start is the mozilla project.
As for liability, it's hard to say. Unisys did claim that it would go after commercial websites that used unlicensed GIFs, including, presumably, many Linux focused sites.
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to batch convert all LZH gifs to gifs using, say, zip compression. And would such gifs be compatible with modern browsers? LZH should die a lonely death, unloved and unknown.
I suggest that everyone who sent a vulgar letter to Unisys and now regrets it should pick up the phone and send flowers to Cheryl.
...should pick up the phone and send flowers to Mark at Unisys
:)) but do I think Unisys, or anybody who works there deserves our sympathy? No! Perhaps this Cheryl, who, for all I know, is very upset, will quit her job because of this, or at least step back from the situation and realize that there are indeed moral issues involved in choosing an employer.
What an awful, sexist, materialistic idea.
First off, you make it sound as if Unisys is somehow absolved from their morally abhorrent behavior because they're not demanding $5000 from every website. Oh, thank you so much Unisys for allowing me to use a technology that you barely even own. Thank you so for continuing to restrict my freedom, but in such a way that is just acceptable enough to keep the angry hordes at bay.
Second, the notion that women in general are somehow less capable to handle flamage (especially a woman who works for a company whose primary source of income revolves around the Internet) because they are more apt to become emotional is outdated and only serves to propagate negative stereotypes about women. I think we can all agree that if your message had said,
People would be like, "why would we send flowers to a guy?".
I personally didn't flame Unisys, and I think flaming people is a bad idea (well, except maybe you, right now
But you don't even give her that chance. She's just an innocent bystander in the man's world of software businesses. She doesn't think or make any decisions herself, she is only acted upon. Her only possible reaction to the situation is defense. I don't know if you personally know Cheryl, or what, but I think if you do, you would be serving her better by explaining to her why she was flamed, rather than just kissing the proberbial "owwie" and saying "It's alright, the mean men are gone now - look, here's some flowers!"
Yes, they have existed since the stone ax. Yes, we can all keep growing up (until we start just getting older). OTOH, the 6 year olds keep getting older too, and by the time the 14 year olds turn 21, the 6 year olds turn 13.
One encourages civility by setting a good example, and doesn't have too high an expectation of teenagers. I'm not certain how much good deploring excessive behavior does, as long as they don't start getting physical. Moderators on the newsgroups help. It might be nice it there were also an unmoderated section.. but there are the unmoderated newsgroups (news.comp.os or whatever seems appropriate)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Does anyone have any idea if this patent applies outside the US? I am in the UK and I am JUST starting up a small business.
Now, yes, I will admit the business is a banner ad company, but dont flame me, as the company is focusing on open source advocacy and products, and also donates a *large* proportion of its income to open-source groups, so please, flames off.
I have a bit of software that I wrote myself to add a little XXX to the corner of a gif on-the-fly if it leads to a website that may be unsuitable for minors. I want to keep this functionality, as it is irrisponsable to NOT warn of possible offensive content, but my business would be completely overwhealmed by a $5,000 bill just for doing this!
As it IS a for-profit business, even though we give away a large percentage to good causes, we would probably have to pay this huge bill for such a small change {:-(
As a final note, heres an idea. Yes, we dont like gifs for a lot of reasons, but they DO have their place. I wonder on the possibility of a group like eff raising the money to buy and open the gif and lzw standards.
PNG
MNG
IMHO, MNG is what we need to be promoting, because image animation is a checkbox item, however irritating some of us old codgers may find it.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
(sorry for error).
All the more reason to use PNG, JPG, or some other real format that is created by an open standards group. GIF, for all intents and purposes, is completely outmoded and outdated, and even though we have our "vulgar" Open Source proponents who berate poor secretaries with their harsh e-mails, there's no use feeling sorry for them. Even though they go about it completely the wrong way, the Visigoths are correct; Unisys is a pile of horse doo-doo, and GIFs and the patents concerning GIFs are even bigger piles of horse doo-doo. Let's all make Unisys (or at least GIFs) obsolete: if you need lossless graphics, use PNG, if you don't mind lossy, use jpegs.
-- adr
I would imagine that what is needed is a "virgin" whose never seen the algorithm for LZW sit down and read LZ78, and create an algorithm based on the paper. It would not be LZW, but something entirely new. I think this would work as I haven't heard of anyone patenting scientific papers.
The party's over
They're going to be dead also?
There are two sides to the story here as I see it. I can completly understand why they want a cut of the profit for software that sells for 500 bucks.. who wouldn't?
But I can agree with how programmers have to get a license from them in order to use their stuff. Just when I thought maybe open-source and it's beliefs would change some stuff, it's just getting weirder and worse in some ways.
My advise to Unisys, end the policy of having to give out licenses for small time programmers to use your work. But, if they finish the program, and it's popularity grows and grows, then be forced to take a cut.
--
Scott Miga
Unisys is in the right. They do not use free software, so they have every right to charge for there's. It may be a real pain that they own the patent, but you have to remember that they paid for it too. On the other hand, if they used free software, one could get upset. I think the Linux Advocacy HOWTO should be read by everyone that flamed Unisys; it may not be Linux but alot of it applies here.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Comments elsewhere in this tree cast doubts on exactly how one qualifies for one of these "hundreds of free licenses". My best guess is that if one is a developer for a government agency that is in the process of evaluating a bid, then one would qualify.
"Hundreds" isn't exactly a large number.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I like GIFs, mainly because of the transparency feature. I use tools like xv, gifsicle, and giftrans to create them. Are any of these tools in violation of the Unisys patent?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Obviously algorithms are subject to patents. Whether or not you like this fact is irrelevant. You may be correct that patent protection may not extend to processes (then again you may not be - not my area), but they are specifically intended to protect the utility of an idea or invention. RSA is an example of an algorithm using basic mathematics which is prima facie patented. It's not the math - it's not the process that's patented - it's the utility arising from the math and process that's patented.
Your assertion of money and business interest winning out over the law is just FUD until you can support it.
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
I thought GIMP used libungif to produce non-LZW compressed GIFs, thus avoiding the whole patent problem?
pooptruck
I agree completely about the precise language.
One thing I am still unclear on, suppose a commercial web page uses donated GIF's? Do they have to make sure all their contributors (some of whom may be anonymous) use the proper software to create them? Or else pay the license fee?
I'm also wondering how the net porn industry will react to this. Though many have converted to jpeg, not all have, and there's lots of animated banners probably too. Most are commercial sites. Might be a lobby and some bucks for a trial there.
Jim
This demonstrates that Slashdot does more than simply direct readers to organizations that do the reporting.
> Unisys did the same thing then, and there was an > effort way back then to come up
> with a LZW-free image compression. I don't know > what ever happened to that issue,
It is alive and well and known as PNG.
I just can't see how anyone in this day and age can claim a patent on peanut butter.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Free software is not freeware. My understanding is that freeware is not copyrighted. Or if it is, it is free as in free beer. For some reason a lot of those freeware authors also stipulate "You cannot use it for things I don't want you to use it for." e.g. commercial purposes, government, defense, etc. If you were using, say, LGPL'd libraries you would never have to pull a library from your software just because you wanted to make money from it. That is truely free software.
I might be wrong here, but it seems everyone is throwing stones at the wrong target.
Why are so many people trashing Unisys over the LZW patent and their general evil in wanting money to create and view GIF's when that that's been done before over and over again.
The NEW point here is that they seem to want money even when you are NOT using the LZW algorithm.
I've been having a few days correspondence with the much maligned and newly famous Cheryl. It takes overnight because I'm down-under in Australia. I've been trying to get a clearer idea of their claim, I waiting for a reply to my latest letter. (given its midday in Oz Cheryl is, I hope, not at work at the moment) :
=section from my latest letter=
Does that mean Unisys are claiming royalties/licenses from John in the following scenario?
John operates a Web Server distributing GIF files, on that server (and associated computers) NO software (licensed or unlicensed) using LZW algorithms is run.
Mary created those GIF files with software that uses unlicensed LZW algorithms.
============
And this, it seem to me, is the whole point. Forget about how the GIF's were created, forget whether its freeware, gimp, licensed or whatever. Surely they hold only a patent on the LZW algorithm, and can only claim on people that use it. Are they really claiming that you have to pay them even when you don't use it ? Remember you don't need photoshop to simply copy files.
I'm not for one minute imagining that the convolutions of the US legal system may not let them do just this. Stranger things than this seem to happen all the time over there (just look at the music industry) to this observer from the other side of the planet. And yes, I don't really think that they should be able to patent an algorithm either, but your law says they can, argue it with courts as well as Unisys.
But this keep your eye on the point that should be in dispute, and its not Unisys's original claim on LZW and the graphic software that uses it. In the above John and Mary scenario, you can't argue that Mary doesn't owe them money/license/royalty, given the current laws. Sure you may not think she should, but forget Mary.
The whole point is: WHAT ABOUT JOHN? He's not using any Unisys product, why should he have to pay?
Mark
So, all you guys got a very important point wrong. Patents are not issued with the primary idea of protecting the perpetual incorporation which "owns" the invention, not in the least. The are issued to protect the progress of science and useful arts for the nation. A patent cannot be issued if it can be shown to be counterproductive to the required progress of science and technology.
This is not a small distinction. And, this principle certainly applies to the case in hand, i.e. Unisys, GIF and graphic communications. Software technology, from the perspective of building actual usable wealth for the "we the people" nation, moves too fast, and requires too little input (stop crying), to warrant national protection for 17 years, when compared to say, development of a fusion engine, or development of a more productive GPL agriculture.
IMHO, but for utter economic incompetance and/or corruption of our congress, there would be no federal protection (patent, trademark, or copyright) for software. The life cycle, or if you like the curvature of the Riemann surface for software wealth-creation, is simple too steep to warrant 17 years of protection. It becomes counterproductive in comparison to required rate of change for growth, and the actual human effort involved.
If he doesn't want to do business with us, he can deride us without much loss. Unfortunately, it can be rather hard to decide just who "us" is. I, for instance, am no longer young, tend to be restrained in my conversation, and frequently comment upon purchases. It is also true that I don't generally decide upon major purchases. Others will have different profiles. Lots of different profiles. A part of my profile is that I am irritated with UniSys (actually, I have been since the original incident with CompuServe, but the level of irritation varies significantly). This will certainly cause me to ask hostile question if any of their products come up for review. Not a deciding factor. But not one without weight.
OTOH, they ARE in a different market place. The last time we knowingly bought anything from them, it was a keypunch. So perhaps they can afford to be as offensive as a teenager. The teenagers will probably grow out of it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
GD has been doing non-lzw gif creation and suggesting PNG for a while now (as of 1.3) As of v1.6, gif support was removed. The release notes for 1.3 state:
Non-LZW-based GIF compression code
Version 1.3 contained GIF compression code that uses simple Run Length Encoding instead of LZW compression, while still retaining compatibility with normal LZW-based GIF decoders (your browser will still like your GIFs). LZW compression is patented by Unisys. We are currently reevaluating the approach taken by gd 1.3. The current release of gd does not support this approach. We recommend that you use the current release, and generate PNG images. Thanks to Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation for contributing the RLE GIF code.
You wrote:
The market will prove who is right, the wrong ones will either switch sides or diseapper.
This is like the old saying: Might makes right!
And that is simply not true. There are many cases where a better technology didn't become standard because it wasn't marketed as well as another inferior technology (can you say Beta v. VHS?).
Some one here on /. has the sig that sys it all: War doesn't determine who's right, Only who's left.
But other than that I would have to say I completly agree with everying else you have said.
Every non-commercial graphics program that compresses GIFs must get the license. I use Graphic Converter (a mighty nice program), and T. Lemke must pay a portion of the $35 he charges for his shareware. Every copy of Photoshop, Canvas, etc. gives Uni$y$ more money. They are just flexing their legal rights. Now, they don't want a for-profit, such as VA Research, to make a web site with the Gimp and not get a piece of the pie.
I wouldn't call them morons, just greedy people. Anyway, if you can get a program that handles 100 different file formats, and by the way handles GIF, for $35, Unisys can't be asking for much.
My $.02 (or is it for Unisys:)
Theft? Whence arises this drivel? Are my ideas morally public property? Not unless I choose to make them so there not. You're also free to not accept ownership of my ideas - much like I reject ownership of your ridiculous stance on this issue.
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
their butt for all it matters. They know it and that's why they are putting the squeeze on. We need to start a countdown and plan a party, because the patent is public domain that day. This would be a good time to replace it with better technology though.
You can bet that they try to get an extension - maybe slashdot can alert readers when their thug lawyers go to congress - give them a taste of heavy handedness...
Same nonsense happens with drug companies "They haven't made enough billions" to let their drugs go to the generics when patents expire, so they ask for extensions left and right. Would be real interesting to keep track of it.
You ever been to a Chicago City Council meeting?
Thanks for calling them, Rob! Good job. Slashdot needs more of this sort of thing.
Why should IBM buy this? They already own it. The LZW stuff was first patented generally as no. 4 464 650 by the scientists and then as no. 4 558 302 (Unisys) and no. 4 814 746 (IBM) by their employees. Way back in the OS/2 days, there was a statement by IBM on the Compuserve GIF enforcing debate, that any kind of GIFs under OS/2 are covered by IBMs license. --Detlef
When someone tells me how to convert a GIF animation into PNG format, without a loss of graphical quality -- Then I will convert, not before.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
> But nowhere, in any of the many "Unisys is evil"
> posts I read, here or elsewhere, did I see a
> single official statement from anyone at Unisys,
I suppose the link to Unisys' official statement doesn't count.
> According to Mark Starr, General Patent and
> Technology Counsel for Unisys, if the GIFs
> on your Web site were created with software
> that is licensed by Unisys, you are fine.
> Nobody at Unisys is going to try to get
> $5000 or even $0.50 out of you. Period.
Translation: don't use GIFs from anyone else's site if you don't know for a fact that they used licensed software (and licensed for your particular purpose, at that).
The official statement includes:
> Why should you get an LZW Web site license?
> You'll be able to deal with any vendors, developers, services or
> Webmasters whether they have an LZW license agreement from Unisys or
> not. You won't have to go to the trouble of verifying that each vendor is
> licensed by Unisys.
That sounds pretty clear to me: "C'mon, better safe than sorry! You don't want to take a chance, do you?"
back to Roblimo:
> How would Unisys know what software you used to create
> a particular GIF?
Good question. Now, how would I know the answer to that question if I saw a GIF at another site and thought "hey, that's nifty!" I'd like to use that!
> I did not ask, "What if someone creates a GIF using licensed
> software that came with a scanner, then modifies that image with
> the GIMP or another freeware program?"
> I really didn't want to know the answer to this question;
Why not? You say they're being really reasonable!
> all of my GIFs have passed through at least one
> Unisys-licensed program at some point, so if I
> am asked I can honestly say that they were created
> (at least partially) in accordance with the Unisys patent.
Oops! Does the official statement say anything about "passed through a Unisys-licensed program at some point"? Nope. Does it say "you can display any GIF as long as you OWN licensed software"? Nope. Why else would a web site operator be advised "buy the $5000 (or more) license" instead of "buy the $500 licensed software package".
Perhaps you didn't ask because you thought you were in a gray area, and didn't care to get slapped with a $5000 license fee (that is, if you don't sell any services or products) if you were wrong?
> you're probably fine, but if you use it to create
> GIF graphics for a Web site that is intended to
> make a profit, Unisys wants a cut of the action
> How much? E-mail them and ask.
And keep in mind that they want $5000 if you DON'T make a profit. Do you really think they'll want less from a business? For a real life example, what about the fellow who wanted enough licenses for approximately 100 copies of a downloadable program, and was told "sorry, the starting point is 200,000 licenses".
Starr can _talk_ all he wants about company policy, but the official policy (assuming that it's official if it's posted on a Unisys page) and the actual practice diverge from his remarks. Which do you think a judge will lend more weight to when you're hauled into court? The official stated policy, or what some guy said to some other guy in a phone interview?
If Starr is being truthful about company policy, perhaps HE should rewrite that offical page.
> He and Unisys PR dude Oliver Picher both described the e-mail
> tirades with words like vile, vulgar, obscene, disgusting, and
> distasteful.
Then I'm very glad my email simply said "1) I could build 2 low-end web servers for about $1500, 2) you want $5000 dollars for the GIF license for that setup?, and 3) I'll be sure to convert all my GIFs to PNGs". No abuse, no foul language, just "I choose not to use a product which you can control".
There are no programs containing LZW compression or any other proprietary items on the official Debian CDs. While GIMP does come with Debian, a quick check will show you their version doesn't do GIFs. For precisely the reasons you mention. Packages to add this support are available, but they don't come on the CD.
Write a #$@#*& perl script to do it.
Unisys has no reason to go straight after
users/consumers for their inability to control their patents. Why aren't they going after developers? One reason. Money!!!!!! Imagine all these companies they can milk because of ignorance to patents. Sorry Unisys, you're still evil.
Save your sanctimonius working class tragedy for people who are easily moved. Any secretary worth her salt knows when to hold down the delete key and let it fly. Right now I'm picturing her running to her boss with the 20+ mail order ads they get every hour and somewhere a slashdot Indian is crying.
What about dynamically generated gifs? Say I use PHP's functions to create some GIF buttons on my site -- are these covered or are they in violation of the rule?
Debian is very, very careful to separate out the non-free software from the official distribution. Programs like the GIMP will have both free and non-free packages available. The free package is fully operational, except for GIF and TIFF support, for which you will have to download the non-free add-on (at your own legal risk). Only the free stuff is included in the official CD-ROM images. Read the Debian Social Contract for more information.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time I remember someone from Slashdot actually going out and finding news, rather than let us bring it to them. Regardless of my feelings about Unisys, I congratulate Roblimo for going out and finding out what is really going on.
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
To the extent that Unisys is a single entity, yes, you have the right to communicate your feelings to it. You can even swear at it, or insult its parentage, if thats the kind of thing you enjoy.
However it is impossible to communicate with the entity called Unisys, you have to talk to its employees instead. Unfortunately mail from ordinary people sent to large companies does not get read by the people responsible for their decisions (and in this case, I might add, Unisys isn't doing much wrong). It gets read by other ordinary people, who really cannot do very much about said decisions. If you insult them, then frankly, thats just rude, and you should apologise.
Unfortunately you can only manufacture your improvement on the original patent if you wait until the first patent runs out, or if you can get the first patent-holder to licence the earlier technology to you (good-luck is you are REALLY trying to run them out of business).
Your improvement patent will however keep the original company from using YOUR improvement ideas without paying you.
More than likely they would just come up with some other improvement to work around your idea, while you still have to wait for the prior patent to expire.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Why use gifs at all? Use PNGs. They have better compression, are capable of being inline images in both 4.0+ browsers (don't know about opera), and are, noteably, GPLed. Well, the codec is, anyway. Replace GIFs!
We are all using a site that makes extensive use of GIFs. Could /. take the lead? Then we could continue the compaign with all the Open Source sites (someone really needs to post an "LZW Free" button). The Mozilla folks will be quick enough to enhance their PNG support (they're probably unlicensed for LZW for the Free Mozilla product).
:)
Worse comes to worse, we can start to threaten to "turn-in" the non-compliant sites...
I use GD to create GIFs on the fly.
What is the best replacement for GD?
Is there a suitable replacement?
Are they working on a PNG creating GD?
Sit down and think about it. The reality is that we have software patents and I believe we should at least support those companies who allow open sourced implementation of their patents so that the free world can benefit from them.
This "reality" exists only in US and maybe few other countries. Much more healthy environment can be achieved if we ju all move to Europe and create enough political noistse to prevent the adoption of software patents there -- after all it's Americans who are so fond of replying "if you don't like what our government does, move somewhere else" to any kind of criticism.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
He isnt "there for the customers". He is there to make money and satisfy the shareholders. He doesnt need a product - he has a software patent. He could tell all his "customers" to their faces to go fsck themselves, and they would still have to pay him, thanks to US laws.
Sure, its sad, its greedy etc, but its a pretty neat situation for him. Money for nothing.
Speaking of LZW and image formats; How about all those LZW compressed TIFFs out there? I myself use an amiga as workstation, and I do not have any software that can read those LZW TIFFs, as all painters/image-processing/viewer programs specificly do not support it, due to licensing. Still I find almost 95% of the TIFFs used in window manager bitmaps and backdrop over at themes.org etc, compressed with LZW.
Tells you something about the so called open/free communities, doesnt it?
IIRC LZW was neither novel or unintuitive. Wasn't it just a modification of LZ77 with "performance enhancements" that made it compress faster by reducing the ammount of compression done? I think gzip uses LZ77 and compress and pkzip use LZW. That's why gzip does a better job compressing.
-matt
foo!
I just released a C library that generates animated (or if you want, 24-bit true-color that really works on browsers) GIFs that are LZW-free.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Starr said that if your GIFs are created with a licensed program, AND Unisys routinely gives out license free to non-profits.
Why can't the authors/maintainers of Open Source GIF creation software, and especially libraries such as libgif, apply for a free license?
Wouldn't that fix the problem?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Web counters can easily use PNG or JPEG. Both have libraries available for programmers (for sure in C/C++, surely also in Perl, perhaps even in Python/TCL). You can also generate LZW-free GIF if you want (angif, gd, libungif). Another technique is to extract the LZW data block from an existing GIF generated by a Unisys-licensed program, for each digit, and piece them together into a multi-image-block (angif can help in this part) GIF file. If your digit collection is already in GIF and was produced by legal code (but how would you know?) this way you can build new GIFs without doing any compress or uncompress operations. The LZW patent only covers LZW, and hence only the data portion of the image block of GIF, not the whole GIF file.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
IMHO, there hasn't been any delay. Unisys has been defending their LZW patent all along. The patent does run out in about 3 years. They have simply changed their course of enforcement to deal with several issues that have been changing. One of those is the rising freeware popularity. I suspect they realize they won't get much out of a non-commercial site using GIFs generated by freeware, but a commercial site is certainly a potential revenue source. And it is legal to collect royalties on the use of a patent, in addition to the implementation of it. And all the while that the use of GIF is growing due to the web growth, Unisys is probably preparing for the coming phase out of the Welch Licensing department. With that, and the lack of future revenue streams, it will soon (before the 3 years are up) not be worth pursuing infringers. So get them for everything for the next 3 years and get it now. And there is the time-value of money gotten sooner, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When lossless compression is required, just use PNGs. PNG offers good compression, and it's lossless, and it's FREE.
GIF only offers better compression on small, simple images that require low (or zero) loss. That's rare. On these images, the difference in bandwidth between GIF and PNG would be slight.
GIF does support multiple image blocks with positioning and size info. The LZW data is in those blocks. If your LZW data is legal (from a GIF file generated by a legal program) then you can extract the LZW part and build a composite image from other images and you wouldn't be doing any LZW at all. That won't be useful for most image work, but for some things it could be, such as image counter CGIs where each digit comes from a digits file (if your digits are legal).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
>Actually, the original poster is right. The patent system was never intended to cover things
>like algorithms (it was quite specific on the point) and to allow such patents or to apply for
>them is theft or attempted theft from the whole of mankind. Ideas are morally public property and
>a system which prevents free use of the human intellect are immoral. 'Intellectual property' is
>not synonymous with 'patents'.
No, he's not. The original poster is an infantile socialist, who wants everything which he likes but doesn't own to be public property.
That is a separate matter from the question of whether algorithms are patentable. I believe that algorithms should not be patentable, though mechanisms or devices to implement them should be protected. So LZW should be public domain, but Unisys' code for performing it should be patentable. Then someone could avoid the royalties by creating their own device (program) to perform the compression. In the chemical industry, the sequence of reactions to convert one set of materials into another set is not patentable, but the equipment used to do so is. If you want to make alcohol from raw materials, you must not use (unless purchased from licenced vendors) patented equipment, but you may make your own. (Ignoring that any patent on fermentation and distillation as a process would have expired long ago.)
The problem is not Unisys, they are just another predator. The problem is the law. Algorithms shouldn`t be allowed to be patented. Ah, one moment... THEY ARE NOT allowed to be patented! At least in 95% of the world :-)
But still something is terribly wrong - png is out for five years, its much better - more efficient, faster, more powerfull - than gif and completely free. It was invented to replace gif when Unisys started to rampage.
WHY THE HELL IS STILL NOONE USING PNG?
(AND WHY GOT MY SHIFT-KEY HUNG?)
It took AGES for ns and ie to learn png. BAD.
Noone knows PNG. BAD.
And instead of supporting the open standard PNG ns and ms do nothing for the "open standard".
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
*groan* There's so much misinformation flying around here... No, PKZip does not use LZW in any way. Where the heck did that rumor get started?
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I just mailed these peopleand asked them:
What happens with a gif that was created with a licenced product and then modified with a program I wrote myself. Answer:
> If you are modifying images and then re-encoding
> in GIF, you likely require a license.
That is bad.
It would have be to be done outside the US. Of course, it would be apropriate to add unisys to that server's hosts.deny - hec, I'll add that to my system anyway!
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Show me a man who doesn't like animated .gif files, and I'll show you someone who doesn't frequent doodie.com
pkzip and gzip use LZ77, but compress uses LZW. LZW is a "performance enhancement" of LZ77, which esentially reduced the amount of compression done by the algorithm to make it faster. Somehow this qualified for a patent even though it seems like it's obviously a derived work. Maybe there are some facts of which I am not aware.
From the gzip man page:
Gzip uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm used in zip and PKZIP. The amount of compression obtained depends on the size of the input and the distribution of common substrings. Typically, text such as source code or English is reduced by 60-70%. Compression is generally much better than that achieved by LZW (as used in compress), Huffman coding (as used in pack), or adaptive Huffman coding (compact).
-matt
They are indeed apparently claiming to own the entire GIF format. Perhaps this is because they don't know that GIF works without LZW, too. This is one reason I'm promoting an interim use of LZW-free GIF, as well as "repackaged GIF" (where a program with no LZW implementation code extracts the LZW from the image blocks and inserts it into new image blocks in another GIF file ... would work for things like image counter CGIs). They seem to think they have some means to determine if a GIF they find on the web is or is not generated by a licensed program. I've actually studied the LZW algorithm well enough to write my own compressor from scratch that really worked and I see no way to easily hide anything in there that would show licensing, nor have I heard that Unisys required licensed implementations to put any license flags in the LZW data. If it turns out they are just using the GIF comment block to make the determination, then I'll just make a program that lets you edit those blocks without any compress or decompress.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Obviously algorithms are subject to patents.
This was not obvious, as a previous poster noted, until court decisions in the past few decades ruled that it was.
In any case, I am perfectly aware that patents have been awarded on purely mathematical processes. My assertion was that this should never have been possible, and constitutes a betrayal of the original intent (as well as court precedent) regarding patents. Which would have been clear had you thought for half a second before replying.
It's true that my opinion doesn't matter, mostly because I don't have a lot of money with which to influence the government. But I'm still entitled to my opinion.
It's not the math - it's not the process that's patented - it's the utility arising from the math and process that's patented.
This is one of the silliest things I have ever read. "Utility" is a vague, abstract economic quantity and cannot be patented. Specific inventions are patented. Utility is what people gain from these inventions, and the idea is that some of this utility should funnel back, in the from of money, to those inventors. But it is not utility that is patented. Lots of people generate nonpatentable utility all day long by, for example, cutting up meat.
BTW: I was mistaken about the processes thing. This link explains the different kinds of patents. Processes can be patented. Oops.
However, the original intention was to allow inventors to patent specifically mechanical (i.e., physical) processes. The US patent office site writes:
Interpretations of the statute by the courts have defined the limits of the field of subject matter which can be patented, thus it has been held that the laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable subject matter.
-- http://www.uspto.gov/web/ offices/pac/doc/general/what.htm
Many people, myself included, assert that an algorithm, as an abstract mathematical process, is much more like an idea than a machine or a technique for manufacturing doughnuts. A closer software analogue of a patentable "mechanical process" is an implementation of an algorithm in software. That is, RSA should have been awarded a patent, not on an algorithm for public key encryption, but on the piece of software that they wrote.
The patenting of algorithms veers very close to the patenting of ideas or laws of nature. The quicksort algorithm (to take a bland example) is no less a pure idea than Pythagoras's theorem or Newton's axioms of motion. That this is not clear to you and every programmer in the nation is a testament to the sorry state of CS education in America.
~k.lee
(remove nospam for email)
Cheryl is a secretary. Her job is to read all the public mail. If UNISYS wants to be on the Internet and receieve email they have to take it all, good and bad. And it's Cheryl job (She gets the $$$) to read this email. If people mailbombed her, as I'm sure some did, then that's too bad. But if someone sent a strongly worded letter once, well that's their right to send whatever the hell they want, and Cheryl's job to receieve and file it, and possibly read it.
I feel no sympathy for her or Unisys. You go on the Internet you're going to get flamed. She and the company needs to DEAL with the consequences of their decisions or unplug their Internet link.
Roblimo did a great job with his posting. I only have *one* complaint. Did Unisys explain why they waited TEN YEARS to lower the boom on people using the GIF format, after it had become a widespread standard and so many graphics packages where using it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but like copyrights, isn't the rule on patents "Enforce them or you lose them?" A large company such as Adobe could potentially stop paying Unisys the licening fees and then argue in court that Unisys didn't seek to protect their investment until it was put into common use. Furthermore, now that gif/lzw is commonplace, (Without Unisys enforcing their patent) the license fees are no longer valid. Anyone with more money then they know how to spend want to pursue this?
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
Few things, first you can use tar to extract a single file w/o gunziping. If you're using GNU tar just tar -zxf blarg.tgz file_you_want_to_extract. Second, the method of compression has nothing to do with being able to store multiple files. PKZip is essentially just tar and gzip rolled into one product. The compression algorithm just takes a big chunk of data and makes it smaller, it doesn't care what info is stored in that data.
-matt
While this guy may be a troll, he is right. Aparently segfault couldn't handle the load after you posted that South Park story. They have been toast ever since then. Sigh...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I read the bit by the ServerObjects people. Can anyone out there enlighten us to the difference between RLE encoding and LZW encoding, and whether their mutually interchangeable to the end user?
If this whole thing is because of the LZW encoding, why not all switch to RLE encoding? ('cept, of course, that it creates a bigger image.)
--jeddz
http://www.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+contains &host=.unisys.com&position=limited
Out of 126 sites found, 21 (on the first page) use CERN, Apache, or Stronghold (a derivative of Apache). Since Stronghold is commercial, they're marked with an asterisk (*):
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=corp2.unisys.c om s ys.com * . unisys.com u nisys.com * s ys.com * s ys.com * c e.unisys.com http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.quake.unis ys.com.br (har har) http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.rmsg.unisy s.com * http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.service.un isys.com http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.suppliers. unisys.com http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.unisys.com .br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.uscsc.unis ys.com * http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=weather.unisys .com http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.wxp.unisys .com http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www100.unisys. com.br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www146.unisys. com.br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www147.unisys. com.br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www150.unisys. com.br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www153.unisys. com.br http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www155.unisys. com.br
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.apcsc.uni
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.clearinfo
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.csgevent.
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.eacsc.uni
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.lacsc.uni
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.marketpla
Even if there were *no* other sites on the other pages using Apache/Stronghold/CERN, that means about 16% of the web servers in the unisys.com domain(s) are running some type of "freeware trash". (BTW, a few Unisys employees I've run across at various sites run Linux in a multi-boot configuration).
It's quite elementary, AC, the story talked about Unisys' official stance on LZW, and how they got swamped with hateful email from impolite zealots. Quite on-topic, if you ask me.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
Can't we all grow up, please??
"We" can, unfortunately new people keep coming along all the time and they have to grow up too. I would guess the average age of the flamers is about 18, testorone running high, ready to take on all the world. Many have seen the light that is free software and want to fight the darkness of proprietary expoitation software. Youthful exhuberance, foul language, and e-mail are a potent mix.
The best way to "fight" this is to voice your own coherent, polite, and flame-free outrage (if you have it) and try to let the law of averages work to its full extent.
+&x
And it's not even the latest version of sendmail!
http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
Fellowship 9/11
While the 17 year limit on patents may be technically correct, in practice I believe it's quite different. Someone _please_ correct me if I'm wrong here, but my belief here is based on some info of how Rainbow vacuum cleaners operate.
:) instead of those godawful bags that need constant changes. I know of no other vacuum cleaner maker who uses such a system, and AFAIK, it's because of they've patented the water-filter thing for vacuum cleaners. The interesting bit here is - Rainbow has been making vacuum cleaners for quite a while and I understand they've held on to their patent by making subtle changes to the design just before the patent runs out and then getting a new patent.
Rainbows use a water filtration system (kinda sorta like a bong
Thus, effectively, they've managed to create for themselves an "infinite patent"
Couldn't UniSys do the same?
As I mentioned, I don't have the "facts" of this, just info I've heard (from a guy who used to fix Rainbows), so if anyone can clear it up, I'd appreciate it.
-m
BTW, if you've ever talked to anyone who's used a Rainbow, they'll tell you they're WAY better than traditional vacuums. Of course, they're also WAY WAY more expensive - I doubt it's the cost of the water.
One problem I suspect that some developers may have is that they may not know C++ so it would be extremely difficult for them to use PNG to its fullest capability in their programs. I say this because (please, don't flame me, I don't know C++) and I program only in Borland Delphi (which is pascal based and for the Win32 platform). The only way I can get any source-code is by purchasing something from a vendor unless I write it from scratch.
My thought is that if someone could provide Pascal and BASIC code for free (no charge), such code could be integrated into a program which is written in those languages (through ActiveX controls, Delphi VCL's, or any other way which would be required).
Thank you for your consideration.
If you could get to http://www.support.unisys.com/useries/html/SVR4/to ols/pubhead.html (password required) you would see:
"Free Software for Unisys UNIX SVR4 Systems"
"Popular software from Internet archives, now available for use on Unisys U6000 systems running UNIX SVR4/MP"
Here Unisys distributes pre-packaged copies of Perl, gzip, Mosaic and Apache for their Intel-based SVR4 servers.
The guy quoted about the "freeware junk" seems clueless for Unisys management: clueless.
The Unisys page that sparked this discussiont ml
http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.h
has been replaced with one dated September 2,
1999, that offers some "clarification" and a list
of a dozen or so Unisys-licensed applications.
Glenn
Thanks for taking the time to contact Unisys. Their policies leave a bad taste in my mouth, but your point about poor Cheryl is very well taken.
Still, PNG and MNG keep sounding better all of the time....
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
What the HELL are you talking about? Unisys 'customers' aren't going to benefitted by giving away the GIF compression scheme for free. They're going to cease being customers and start being users. Basically, Unisys loses a whole bunch of money by ending the licensing scheme, pissing off a whole lot of companies that have already paid money for the license, and gets absolutely nothing in return. Explain to me how this hurts or doesn't hurt Unisys' customers?
I, for one, and probably one of the few on Slashdot, applaud Unisys for their business model. It is not harsh to the freeware community (the GIMP can still develop using GIF LZW technology so long as they don't profit from it) and they still can make money off the $400 graphics suites like Photoshop. I can think of companies that have been less sympathetic to non-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Quit your complaining! The entire world does not need to be free to be perfect.
Oops, my bad. I'm wrong about gaining rights to LZW.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Let's just all use PNG and end this insanity.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
So, a webmaster could easily circumvent any legal action from Unisys simply by taking all of their images, opening them with a 'licensed' free or commercial image editor and saving them with that program.
In any case, who UNISYS sues or doesn't sue doesn't matter much. The reason why UNISYS is getting such bad press out of it is not because they are pursuing an iffy patent--lots of companies are doing that.
What irks people is that UNISYS seems to have allowed GIF to become a de-facto standard on the web without ever asserting their intellectual property rights. If they had made their intentions clear from the beginning, nobody would have used their technology. LZW isn't intrinsically valuable (there are lots of reasonable compression algorithms), it's only valuable because people have widely chosen to adopt it.
In fact, in other areas of property rights, UNISYS would have forfeited their rights through non-enforcement (c.f., real-estate easements, trademark law, etc.); it's an oddity of patent law that they are getting away with this. I think it also reflects poorly on their ethical standards; as a business partner, I'd be left wondering what kinds of rabbits the UNISYS legal department might be pulling out of their hat after I had signed a contract with them.
It's inconceivable that anyone could invent a compressor that doesn't use the LZW algorithm, yet generates output that is compatable with a LZW decompressor.
Well, if there is a way, no one has discovered it. The research time would be longer than the patent duration. ;-)
Looking at it as a function is a good thing, since that exposes the software patent for what it really is: a patent on a mathmatical function, not a physical invention. Is this what the patent system was intended for? I don't think so...
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Porn in GIF format? Damn, you need more than 256 colors for porn, with that few colors it'd look realy crappy.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Do any free programs that you can think of off the top of your head actually use Unisys technology? I know there's libungif which doesn't use the same patented technology. If these programs do use the technology, what happens when a company like Redhat bundles them and then sells them? Who pays the licensing fee (if any)?
The hordes of script-kiddies who bombarded that nice lady over at Unisys with vulgar hate-mail actually have a point.
First of all, Unisys knows that they have pissed some people off now. They understand that it's not just a few random idiots, but a well-organized (if immature) movement of at least several thousand people.
Second, Unisys's point (in a nutshell) is: "We don't mind if you use Licensed Software (read: products from people we are extorting from) to create GIFS -- as long as it's from a Reputable Company (read: an entrenched part of the military-industrial complex) you don't have to worry." This *is* immoral, vulgar, distasteful, and stupid. We can't ignore the fact that it is a horrible abuse of the U.S.'s patent system, whether or not that system is broken. I'm NOT going to license an idea that I could work out how to do on my own time by reading published specifications to write software that I'm not going to sell anyway, and it's totalitarian to insist that I do so.
Unisys is saying that they have the right to charge you an arbitrarily large sum of money for a product which they had nothing to do with the development of (I'm sure no Unisys code was used in the creation of the Gimp) based on the content of your web-site. First amendment anyone?
Third, that "nice lady" is working for a large, powerful, horrible corporation. If she can't deal with the orwellian machinations of her employer, she should quit, not be portrayed as a heroine for reading all the hate mail that was indended for her boss. Unfortunate that nice people have to get slagged sometimes for things that aren't directly their fault -- but imagine a pretty, well-spoken girl working as the receptionist for the American Nazi Party. A similiar article could be written about her -- "To all you jews who were harrassing Christina, you should really apologize!" Even if she just answered the phones for them, her presence there relates her to them, and makes her responsible by extension.
If you think my comparison to Nazism is a bit extreme, keep in mind what Unisys wants to do here -- they want to own the web. Right now, they can only lay claim to the LZW-compressed parts of it, but they're not providing a service to consumers, they're extorting money from random people who happen to live in the U.S. and use their stupid graphics format.
Luckily, we have a choice. We can use PNG. I certainly plan to: but not because of Unisys's patent -- it's because it's a better graphics format. What would a boycott say about patent law, anyway? What if someone patents some relevant compression algorythm for PNG, or JPEG, and then all of a sudden everyone in the world owes 15 years of late-fees for not paying their "licensing" bills.
Some laws should not be obeyed, and this patent law is one of them. Don't be scared of the big, bad Unisys. If they actually start bothering you, form user groups and start a class-action suit -- I'm sure that given the incredibly long time they haven't been enforcing this and the number of public-domain implementations of LZW would be ample legal grounds for a case (although not a victory by default).
Unisys did not sell me anything, not even a piece of software (I'm not a total FSF zealot -- I just bought Myth2 and CivCTP from Loki -- I *like* commercial software to be available for my platform!) and I don't intend to pay them for their legal department.
Glyph Lefkowitz - Project leader, Twisted Matrix Labs
Writer, Programmer - Not a member of the TSU
Sorry, I once worked for an ISP that was particularly low on The List for some rather shady sales practices (among other things), and I used to get a dozen emails a day that would make a sailor blush and a soldier start looking over his shoulder. Anyone who has ever worked in a service position, from cops to secretaries, knows how many totally insane freaks are out there. You get used to dismissing lunatics; I doubt she's losing any sleep over a bunch of foul-mouthed kids not old enough to rent a car.
You also don't change anyone's mind by flipping about a policy that isn't even new. You want to change their minds? Use PNG wherever possible, and let people know.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Sorry, but as General Patent and Technology Counsel for Unisys the people that keep him in business are the shareholders and he's serving them well. The purpose of a business is to make money, after all, and maxinmize the way that happens. If they thought that "being there for the customers" would make them more money, they'd do it.
...written in another country that doesn't recognize US Patent laws?
"You're either outstanding, or outprocessing"
Like said jetson123, we've been taught that if you don't assert your patent rights FROM THE GET-GO, you forfeit them to the public domain.
And that's exactly what Unisys has done here; it could even be argued that they deliberately allowed LZW to become a standard by NOT burdening it with the ball-and-chain of patent enforcement and demand for royalties every step of the way.
Corporations have far too many privileges versus the common man as the law sits now, for us to allow Unisys to go back and "do over" an instance where they failed to execute within the law as it exists. Were it not for the size of the company, and the sheer amount of resources they could bring to bear, Unisys would have lost patent rights to LZW long ago. Thank God it expires soon anyway.
And even if you're not so conspiracy-minded as to think there aren't people whose passion is to sabotage the Open Source movement by sounding like rabid zealots, the idea of "don't swear at the company because it's a secretary that has to answer it" is a total non-starter. Dumb$#!+, that's exactly WHY they put a secretary there, and that's not our fault, either.
Roblimo, you're *THIS* close to inaugurating my Katz filter, which at this point doesn't even include Katz.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
...for doing some actual *RESEARCH* instead of instantly hitting the "flame" key.
_ )
He forgot to mention one thing, however -- patents are only valid for 17 years. The LZW patent was filed in 1985. This whole issue will be moot in three more years!
(if you want to see the LZW patent, it is available here: http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US04558302_
It worries me that software patents seem to have such broad effects -- they originally got their patent for a hardware implementation of LZW, and now claim to have complete ownership of a data format, no matter what software is used to generate it, or what the application is. This means that creating GIF files for your own use would fall within the scope of their patent; removing them from your web site would not save you. Running them through a licensed program won't save you -- the license for that program will include a sublicence for using the output of that program but only that program.
>Those of you who sent those e-mails don't need
>to apologize. I already did, profusely,
>on your behalf. And the person to whom I
>apologized most humbly was not Starr, but
>Cheryl, the low-paid secretary who had to read
>all the filth.
I take extreme exception to this. While I agree
with the principle that vulger emails are not
productive for our cause, the idea that we are
somehow offending a company representative is
unacceptable.
Like it or not, Cheryl represents a company that
has ticked off a lot of people. It is her _job_
to listen to the tirades her company's policy
has triggered. That is her _job_. If she doesn't
like it in this economy she can pack it up and go
elsewhere - maybe to a company less inclined to
tick off people, in which case her job might be
a sight more pleasant. But she is still _paid_
to represent her company, even to people her
company has grossly offended with their idiocy.
And you, Sir, have no cause to be issuing
apologies on anyone's behalf but your own.
>but she is the person whose job it is to
>read all the abusive e-mail sent to Unisys via
>the e-mail address on the relevant corporate Web
>page.
When one is working for an unpleasant company one
expects to have to deal with people being
unpleasant right back. I learned it at Cabletron.
Cheryl now understands it - but everyone _should_
understand it from the start.
When you front for a company in _whatever_
capacity, you _represent_ that company. You'll
take whatever kudos or brickbats come your way
_for_ the company. If the company gets more of
the latter than the former - leave! It's not a
good place to work.
-- Larry Smith
Patents are supposed to protect small-time inventors and operators, not be a bargaining chip for multinationals to use to bully people (which is just what this is---pure extortion on Unisys's part.)
I've seen many people talking about Unisys's inability to prove an image was generated with unlicensed software; this double-edged sword means it's impossible for someone who wants to become compliant to know where ver GIFs came from, so they'll have to be re-created, or cough up the $5000 fee.
The answer? Realise Unisys's patent and subsequent ``offer'' for what they are: further abuse of the patent system to get a few more dollars from an idea that just simply isn't worth what they're asking.
Thanks for the clarifications, and thanks for reminding us that four letter words don't really convince people to change their minds.
At the same time, this article certainly makes the voting question seem a little more relevant? Can I assume that Slashdot uses The GIMP?
If both PKZIP and Gzip use the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, why can PKZIP compress multiple files into one archive, and then extract them all, or extract an individual file separately, while Gzip can only compress and extract a single file. If PKZIP can use LW to compress multiple files, why can Gzip only do one at a time? (yes, i know you can first tar your multiple files and gzip the tar file, but gzip is still only compressing one file, the tar file, and you can't extract the individual original files either...you have to un-gzip and then un-tar everything).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ohoh -- I sense an imminent "comparison to Hitler" coming up. Hey, if you feel that Unisys is a monster, YOU go out and make an image format and free it to the world, you noble altruistic saint you :-)
It's nice to send flowers to people to make them feel better.
I've sent flowers to men. I have felt sorry for men who have to deal with unecessary crap in their jobs.
Drop the fake feminism, pinhead.
As far as your moral outrage over the LZW patent, get over it. They invented something. They patented it. They're enforcing their patent. Nobody has come up with a convincing arguement that it's a bad patent (except "patents are bad."). Look at countries which don't have patents. Look at their contribution to technology. You wanna be like them?
You don't like it? Promote PNG. Fire up emacs (or for someone of your limited intelligence, vi), and make sure that Mozilla supports PNG. Just stop being an asshole. Please.
If Unisys had used more precise language on their page (anyone remember the flap over the APSL?), then much of this could have been avoided. As it was, it seems to me they were hoping to create the impression that any website with a GIF, a PDF, or a TIFF would need to cough up to get a get-out-of-lawsuit-free card.
When I read the page, I suspected that as long as you use Photoshop or some other licensed program, you're fine, but they made none of the distinctions that Star did in his explanations. The fact is, they were trying to reach a broad audience, and should have written it to make sense to a large audience. I'm really surprised that their counsel let that imprecise a wording escape to the web, but then, that's probably why he's working for a coporation and not a law firm.
Perhaps Unisys should ask themselves if their attitudes and PR strategies as demonstrated here have more to do with their lack of good PR from license giveaways than any lack of appreciation on the part of the recipients.
Webmasters aren't incorporating PNG images in their websites for a number of reasons, but the reason I can think of as being the most prevalent in my mind is that for most browsers the support for PNG is pretty rudimentary. There are too many "conditions" and broken features involved... no one wants to deal with that! Lossless compression is great, but it also causes the inevitable circumstance of an image still being bigger than it would be under GIF. People who have 56k analog modems will cry when they have to wait for these images to load up, and no webmaster wants irate visitors to his/her website.
Don't get me wrong now... I like the PNG format, and I'm considering using it on my own website when I finally get my butt around to making it. But the fact remains that so long as the common browser cannot deal with it as easily as dealing with GIF and JPEG, it will have a very large thorn in it's side.
Mozilla authors, are you reading this??? Support PNG!!! (I would aid you, but I can't code worth a damn)
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
I suggest that everyone who sent a vulgar letter to Unisys and now regrets it should pick up the phone and send flowers to Cheryl. You'll have to call Unisys to get the address first, of course. A popular site for ordering flowers is http://www.1800flowers.com (1-800-468-1141).
I forgot to add -- then next time you send off an invective-filled email to some unknown, try and picture that it's your sister or mom who has to answer them.
Well, its been enough to make me leave Unisys!
:-P
If GIF format is so dangerous to use/evil (because of legal reasons), how come /. still has GIFs all over their site?
At least the site for PNG uses PNG files.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I would love to see more of this sort of thing on Slashdot - preferably before the quick-n-dirty article (like Sunday's) is released. We can do a lot more with facts than we can with rumors. Often, all the discussion in the world (what was it, 470 comments on Sunday?) can't replace the value of a single phone call to the company to get the facts.
I agree regarding comments about using PNG in preference to GIF. Does anyone know how much longer the Unisys patent on LZW has to run? Patents run out after 15 years don't they? GIF is atleast ten years old and uses an even older algorithm. Any ideas?
If PKZIP can use LW to compress multiple files, why can Gzip only do one at a time?
Because, in accordance with the UNIX philosophy, it is better to write programs that do one thing well because you can hook them together very easily. (Note also that gzip follows compress's syntax very closely, for backward compatibility...)
(yes, i know you can first tar your multiple files and gzip the tar file, but gzip is still only compressing one file, the tar file, and you can't extract the individual original files either...you have to un-gzip and then un-tar everything).
Then use afio, which compresses each file separately (if you ask it to). Generally you should get better compression if you agglomerate first, then compress, because of similarities among the files in the collection, but that does decrease reliability.
Patents can be secured for an indefinate period of time as long as the holder or his/her appointee reapplies to the patent office to renew it. Patents only lapse when the holder fails to renew after a set period of time. I believe Unisys will continue to renew their patents as long as they continue to make enough from them to justify their renewal.
They existed during the times of OS/2, and did lots of harm and no good, and they obviously exist in the Linux community. Those who insult, abuse, and even threaten people who disagree with them. Let's face it - living in a niche breeds fanatism. Why these advocacy idiots don't grow up, get a clue, and maybe a life too, is completely beyond me. Sure, there exist those who try "Good" linux advocacy, who have reasonable opinions and especially polite ways of dealing with those who disagree. They get drowned out in the noise created by those mentally retarded youngsters with foam at the mouth who think they're the center of the world.
Who can wonder about why there's wars between nations for little things like religious differences when we (speaking as one of millions of computer users) would like to beat each other to pulp just because - "everyone who uses Win/Lin/OS2/Palm/CE/Amiga/DOS/C64/Atari/Nike is an idiot"?
It disgusts me. Can't we all grow up, please?
'cause he's dead....
You can't expect a huge megacorporation to act as an agent of social change. The most you can hope for is that they act in a way that is marginally reasonable, and its pretty clear that Unisys is doing that.
And you know who I hope feels sick? I hope you feel sick for calling some poor underpaid secretary a "tyrants body guard." People are being killed and oppressed around the world just for trying to live their lives, and you're shouting about tyranny just because one of the approximately EIGHTY MILLION graphic file formats available isn't free. Grow the fuck up.
On a side note, once again, what makes it OK to verbally abuse someone the way these idiots do, online, when if you did it in person, you'd probably get clocked? Not a real good way to get your point across.
I think a lot of the anger about this comes out of the obvious lack of realism in the license terms. Adobe Photoshop costs somewhere around $695. If I create an image using Photoshop, it's legal. So why, under any conceivable situation, should I be obligated to pay $ 5,000 for a license, when I could buy the same thing (and get a FREE program!) for $ 695?
Now, I own a legal copy of Photoshop. Let's say I want to do some image processing on my Unix machine, so I use the GIMP to create a GIF file. Since I've already paid Unisys for a license to distribute GIFs by purchasing Photoshop, should I have to pay again for the GIMP?
Now, I'm sure most of the revenues from Photoshop go to Adobe, not Unisys. Let's say I don't have a legal copy of Photoshop, and I want to make my copy of the GIMP legal to produce GIFs. Would it not be reasonable for me to write, say, a $10 check to Unisys to pay for LZW? I really doubt they get more than that from Adobe for the license. If I was using the GIMP to produce GIFs, I wouldn't mind writing that check - $ 10 isn't exactly going to send me to the bankruptcy court or anything.
Bluntly, I don't think even a small fraction of those who run non-commercial web sites have $5,000 for a license, no matter what program they used to create GIFs. As a result, I believe the Unisys program to be hopelessly wrong-headed, even if it's directed only at people without licenses of any kind.
Finally, I'll bet most people simply don't know if they own a license or not. Say I create an animated GIF using e-Picture on the BeOS. Beatware is a tiny company that sells a $149 package. Do they have a license? How the heck should I know? I certainly don't know how they run their business! What about Paint Shop Pro, which many people buy for around $ 79? Does that include a license? Search me. I certainly don't think it's fair for Unisys to come out with this kind of nebulous warning without explaining what software they're targeting and why.
I suppose Boutell.com's GD library was a major violator here. Let's say you use GD to dynamically create GIFs. I'd argue that you owe Unisys $10 or so, just as I mentioned above for the GIMP. If there was a reasonable program to collect this money, I think most of us would pay.
Unisys doesn't need to make the software free, but they need to be reasonable and fair about their license conditions. Trying to charge $5,000 to sites that have gross revenues of $ 0 is insane, no matter what use they make of the technology. Charging them $10 would make Unisys a little money, make us lose a little money, and everyone would be more or less happy.
D
----
I think you all need to step back and think a little bit about how the law works for big corporations.
Many big corporations (like the one I work for) are extremely leery about using freeware/whatever when it gets incorporated into a product (nb: this doesn't include the use of Perl/GCC/whatever). The reason? When the time comes that they sell or license whatever they have produced, the contract frequently includes terms that say "we warrent that what we are selling you is ours to sell, and in the event that that is not true, we will do everything to make you whole". It's like doing a title search on a house -- before you buy it, you get a document from the seller saying it's his/hers to sell.
Now, we were licensing a large software product (1m+ lines of code) to another company. We had used a number of off-the-net libraries in that product, and we were giving them an exclusive source license. We had to show, for each and every one of those libraries, its *exact lineage* to prove to the lawyers of both sides that we could legally redistribute it. In some cases, we had to rip the libraries out because they were marked "not for commercial use" (the product was originally developed for government research, so previously, we were ok). In one case, we had to rip the library out because we couldn't find the licensing terms, and couldn't find the author.
This is not silly, it is good business sense -- but it is/was time-consuming and a pain in the ass. I, for one, thought the lawyers were making too big a deal out of it, but we were lucky in that they had a technical background and helped grease the wheels to get the legwork done. Other companies might decide to take another approach, and not incorporate or redistribute freeware at all.
I have been thinking that , while I have heard of this and seen it in action , I do not know of a single person who would unintellegently flame a company or group directly . My comments on this board are certainly opinionated but I am much more reserved when giving feedback to companies and publicly accessed BBs . I believe that everyone that I know uses the same care when dealing with 'The Public' . So where does all this come from ? The only answer that fits what I know / think about human nature is that these people are a vocal minority . And that it takes less keystrokes to swear at someone than to write an intellegent inquiry . I wonder if the cure to this phenomena is not issuing repeated warnings against it but for us to swamp out the flaming effect . Imagine : If enough reasonable voices respond to things that we now/suspect are going to get flamed for a story about them then the outrageous advocates will be put into a proper perspective . That is the will be recognized as a vocal minority . Squireson This is quoted from a recent slashdot.org article describing a massive flame from the anonymous cowards out there against Unisys . "Cheryl does not set Unisys policy, and she does not own stock in the company, but she is the person whose job it is to read all the abusive e-mail sent to Unisys via the e-mail address on the relevant corporate Web page. All you do when you send her obscenities is make her - and by extension, her boss, Mark Starr - think that Open Source advocates are crackpots and idiots. But I am going to cut this potential tirade short,because Rob Malda has already given you a similar lecture, Eric S.Raymond has given it, Bruce Perens has given it, and Richard M. Stallman has given it so many times that he probably mumbles it in his sleep. "
First off, your message implies that you're the "General and Patent Technology counsel for Unisys" so I think you should have used the Preview function to review your message before posting.
Now, it's time for a little "Business 101": Businesses run on money and, unless you're doing an offering, which plays by different rules, money does not come from stockholders or from potential stockholders. Instead, money goes to stockholders in the form of dividends when a company is profitable.
Where, then, does the money come from? Why, from the customers of course! In order for a business to remain in business, it is necessary for that business to convince their customers that they should give them money. Therefore, in the final analysis, "being there for the customers" is the only consideration of any importance for a business in the long term.
It seems likely to me that, like many large companies, Unisys has forgotten this simple fact. Focusing on the stock price is done for the benefit of the stockholders, (chief among them being the officers and directors who are mostly paid in stock and, therefore, can be counted on to make sure that the stock prices remain high if that is at all possible,) not the company itself.
One other thing it is important to realize is who Unisys's customers are. They are not the users of various graphics programs. They are the licensees of the patents. It is not necessarily in the best interests of Unisys's current licensees to give licenses away to anyone.
Of course, if real alternatives exist, there is no point in complaining about Unisys. Switch to PNG, if you have a mind to! What bothers me, as the owner of an ISP, is the possibility that Unisys might come down on me for something one of my customers have on their Web site. It is not within my power to control my customers.
Cut the crap, Roblimo. People here were actually aware that the latest patent issue only affected open-source image manipulation programs without a UNISYS license. You know, this is, uh, an open source site (perhaps you hadn't noticed?) and so that's kinda an important issue here. I'm delighted for you that your images all go through commercialware at some stage. We're breaking out the champagne at work as I speak. But, you know, some people choose not to use commercialware.
And finally you've only got your job as editor on slashdot because your virtual daddy (Andover) owns the site, so don't go round acting like you've been selected by the community to act on its behalf. Frankly, with the way UNISYS has been trying to screw everyone with this dubious patent for so long, I couldn't give a stuff what their chief patent lawyer or any of their staff think of the open source community, because I'm pretty sure what I think of them.
Glad to see that you're trying to help. While your at it, why don't you ask them to meet you out by the bikeracks so that you can beat them up?
Acting like a 12 year old doesn't work, of course, you probably didn't listen to any of the other things your parents should have told you...
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
PNG has always supported transparency. Or, more accurately, it has a full alpha channel, which means that any pixel in the image can be completely opaque, completely transparent, or anywhere in between. The alpha channel has been supported by browsers (well, at least the good browsers, like AWeb) for years.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You wrote:
"Patents are supposed to protect small-time inventors and operators, not be a bargaining chip for multinationals to use to bully people (which is just what this is---pure extortion on Unisys's part.)"
Just where does this idea come from? It may well be a valid personal perspective, but there's no basis that I'm aware of from a historical perspective that supports this view. A patent is intended to protect an inventor from competition for a time so that the inventor can realize a return for the work and risk that was undertaken to produce the invention. Whether this effort and risk is undertaken by a "small-time" inventor or a large multi-national corporation is of no import.
Researchers working for large corporations assign rights from their work to the corporate entity in return for access to resources necessary to undertake the research and protection from the personal risk involved with the possibility that the research time will be for naught. Corporations employing researchers (inventors) are certainly entitled to patent protection as much as the lone "garage" hobbyist / inventor.
Whether many of the software patents currently being awarded are legitimate is another question entirely.
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
Well...as lots of people has been saying about this, PNG sounds better every day....then again, I don't have any gifs on my sites so...jpg is good, and there's no silly animations :)
/. (or whatever other site) posted....and they will NOT have kind thoughts about us, because people who is insulted doesn't have kind thoughts about those that insult them, so....use your brains, if you have any. Or, at the very least, shut up.
As for the pseudo-advocates that can't stay away from the flamethrower....kids...you hurt the Free Software/Open Source movement a lot more than you can help it with your silly tirades...most people out there will be hearing about FS/OS for the first time the day s/he gets one gazillion emails because of something that
Vox, who really dislikes "advocates" who don't have a clue
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messanger...
LZW stands for: Lempel, Ziv, Welch.
:-)
This are the guys who invented it.
a) Sombody can't patent something he has no copyright on. (Even not in the US)
b) LZW is technology of today(well, in fact of yesterday), nothing state of the art, totaly new, or what so ever.
It's simply what you learn in school.
c) The patents in europe are only granted because
the holder has a similar one in the US.
d) if someone would attack the patent in court it would be canceld. (At least in Europe)
This is like I would patent making bread, now. Of cource I would not stop: butter, wine, bear is all patented technology now.
Please don't support your illegal backer around the corner!!!
Stop eating his bread!
I will get him!
Ha, and if he is drinking my patented wine I will get him harder.
Strange state your US
To make it simple.
Everything you learn in school is nothing anyboda can have a patent on (school college university).
Regards.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Troll
There are a number of developers sites out there with gripe pages about getting the run-around from Unisys. It sounds like companies that have tried to license LZW have ended up doing the run-around on shifting sand! If Unisys standardized thier terms to the point that they could post them publicly (on a web page) and anyone could read them in plain English, it would help.
:-).
It's a Good Thing(tm) that the patent runs out in 3 years if it's going to be managed in this way. In the meantime, I wonder if a benevolent giant (IBM?) might be interested in *buying* the patent and making the technology available under more sane terms. The upside could be a nice PR boost and a general sput in the right direction for the web (not that its growth rate is a problem right now
If GIF animation were to vanish, I for one would not be terribly upset.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Anyone have any idea what would be the feasability level of an OpenSource community boycott? By this I mean a boycott not only of the GIF format, but also all software that's licensed to use GIF.
We have GIMP. The only useful feature I can think of that JPEG doesn't have is transparency. Jpeg doesn't have animation, but no one in their right mind likes animated GIFs anyhow.
Personally, I'm already unofficially boycotting all Unisys licensed software by simply using GIMP, and creating JPEGs. How dificult would it be to convince the rest of the OpenSource community to stop buying Unisys licensed software?
No, it is NOT her fault for CHOOSING to work for a company that does "immoral" things. 1) unisys is in their rights to charge for a patent (even though they haven't been consistent about this) and 2) nobody "deserves" abuse such as this (except for spamford wallace since the punishment fits the crime.)
Lowmag.net
Perhaps. They can certainly sue individuals one at a time,
just as the US DOJ can sue administrators of warez sites -
one at a time.
They've already started.
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho....
Simon Hibbs
We *really* need transparency support for PNG to be implimented in Netscape and other browsers. I too like the transparency feature (and, in moderation, the animation feature can be nice too). The PNG spec does allow various forms of transparency -- supporting it shouldn't be that difficult.
:-)) to advertise that the page doesn't use GIF's with a link to the anti-GIF page explaining why. Software patents are a very bad thing IMHO, so I do this for philisophical reasons more than "fear" of a UNISYS crackdown. The fact is, however, that if the law allows for UNISYS to demand the kinds of royalties alluded to in Sunday's article, their assurances that they will refrain from demanding such royalties doesn't mean they won't do so in the future. Clearly their first responsibility is to their shareholders -- how long before economic pressures to increase revinues causes them to rethink their position and revise their policy again -- this time even less in our favor? Better to simply make the entire issue moot, by not having a single GIF image anywhere on one's website.
As an aside, I just got done eliminating all of the GIFs in my personal web site and replacing them with PNG equivelents (which Netscape 4.5 appears to support just fine), and am copying the changes to the website as I write this. When I get a chance I'm going to put together a nice little "GIF Free" icon using the GIMP (in PNG format naturally
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Unisys (or someone) could probably avoid much confusion and agita by posting a list of GIF creation software whose makers have gotten the license. Even if it isn't absolutely complete (it would, of course be good if the list were actively maintained), it would answer an FAQ.
You must be using a definition for the word 'immoral' with which I am unfamiliar. (You can't mean 'unethical', because what Unisys is doing is definitely within their rights as set out by patent law.)
Are you protesting the entire patent system? You say "...protect small time inventors and operators..." but there is nothing in the patent law, as originally created or now, that restricts patents based on size. Sounds to me like you want to have two different types of intellectual property, or perhaps two different types of companies - one that's allowed to have intellectual property and one that's not - with a dividing line based on some unspecified size constraint.
I guess I'm confused by your attitude. Questions: (1) Can companies have intellectual property? If no, then why not? (2) If yes, then are they allowed to profit from and protect their intellectual property? If no, why not?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
By customers, you're presumably talking about the people
who have paid to use Unisys' intelectual property, or
have bought a licensed product. Unisys seems to be serving
those customers just fine.
How are they being disadvantaged?
If by 'customers' you mean peoiple who are missapropriating
unisis' intelectual property, or using unlicensed and
therefore illegal software, this is some new definition of the
term 'customer' I've previously not been aware of.
Simon Hibbs
After having a little time to consider it all, one thing sticks in my mind. Why has UNISYS waited so long to put the hammer down on the licensing? Jeez the technology's been floating around for years. Had they made a big stink about it early on the use of GIF's may not have evolved to the point they have today. I imagine an entirely free format would have emerged out of neccesity. I started surfing the internet..in 92 or 93. I don't remember hearing much about this up until now.
I personally don't believe that algorithms should be patentable. I don't begrudge anyone proper remuneration for his or her work, however. (I'm also not interested in debating these two points today, for anyone else who may be reading.)
I do consider enforcing the LZW algorithm patent after GIF had become so widely-used rather suspicious, at best.
I also agree that giving away free licences for non-profit use is a Good Thing, if one must be in the position of licensing an algorithm. I suspect that we disagree on how necessary it is to do so, and that is fine.
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I'l just use jpegs, and java for animations.. screw the gifs, if they are going to be that way about it. Everyone else is open sourcing in some way or another, they need to let this patent expire, and stop paying the maintenance fee.. oh well in time it will expire and gifs will be free.. they may end up killing themsevles anyway
Only 'flamers' flame!
Maybe the reason people are so fierce about this is the fact that the GIF format has become a de facto standard for the web. The same Unisys patent applies to the vast majority of TIFF files as well, for instance, but nobody cares about those because we haven't grown dependent on them.
In fact, there is no particular reason that GIF is as popular as it is, other than that the folks at NCSA arbitrarily chose to support it in Mosaic.
This is a very concrete example of why de facto standards are much more dangerous than open licensed, freely available, public ones. Three cheers for the IETF, the W3C, and all other freedom-oriented standards bodies! Keep your guard up around the Open Group, the MMA (MIDI Manufacturers Association), and other standards bodies whose licenses are restrictive and expensive.
--Div.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
I'd like to see if those in the know out there can answer this one... If you can use RLE Compression rather than LZW then unisys really has no effect on the gimp whatsoever. All in all having contracted for them before I can see why they come off as asses to most open source people. Then again most debian zealots come off to me the same way:) you know who you are. But they are basically a company thriving on government contracts that really has decided against into the personal computing user space at all. They do mainframes. That they do well. Everything else they do is not really of much consequence until people start getting annoyed at the unseen Microsoft/Unisys/etc. tax on our government spending.
Hate to say it, but if you aren't paying for Unisys software (LZW or other) you *aren't* a customer.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
the compressession schemes that the two use are completely different. What is a small, crisp picture in a GIF is crap as a JPEG, and visa-versa.
Try this little experiment: Make a plain, boring, unaliased white text on a black background...and then save it as a JPEG. Because JPEG defines deviation from an average in a image, you're going to get annoying grey specs all over the place.
GIF, on the other hand, defines horizontal lines of the same color...therefore, 2 colors, not many changes, great compression.
And yet, the opposite's true, too, as there's times when GIF sucks, and JPEG is the way to go..
anything with photorealistic shading, for example.
Know your file formats. Even if you have to read the JPEG and GIF sections of The Encyclopedia of Graphical File Formats while at a bookstore, people should learn when to use what formats, for maximum compression, and help preserve the bandwidth that we have.
The Bandwidth Conservation Society also has good info.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I went to a test page that had four identical png files in seperate tables with different color table backgrounds. The backgrounds were supposed to show through the transparent parts of the png - but all I got were the big white square (supposed to be transparent) with a 'non-transparent' image in the middle and a colored border signifying the table bgcolor - hence, no transparency. While the png may be a marvelous format - even Netscape doesn't have it's act together on processing them. Hopefully the latest snafu will encourage browser programmers to step up their quality of support to make png the new image format on the web... We all need to bug our respective favorite browser vendors to improve support for png and maybe make png plugins for older browsers for those who don't wish to or can't upgrade...
I have a question: ok, they can licence the LZW algorithm for producing the file, but suppose I write another algorithm that produces a compressed image that is readable by gif readers, would that be legal?
In the end, the gif compressed format is just a function of the image, and there must be more than one way of computing that function right? What am I missing?
-- Slef
Their patent WAS NOT legally obtained.
How so?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
The patent is only legal in the US and a few european countries. But that's not the whole world.
If I make a GIF in Denmark (where LZW isn't covered by patents) and "export" the GIF to the US - Is that GIF legal or illegal in the US?
(For some value af legality)
BTW: Thanks for the follow up.
Yet Another Debian User
You are wrong to 'applaud' Unisys for their business model. If proprietary algorithms really were desirable on the Web, we'd all be using FIF or something (remember, Fractal Image Format? Impressive ability to zoom in on images) ;P
Unisys kept mum for long enough to let GIF become substantially established on the Web- causing the majority of web browsers to make it the single most compatible web graphics format (I remember browsers that couldn't even display inline jpegs, and does your browser do jpegs as _background_ pictures?), and only then did they start trying to extort money out of people. This constitutes bait-and-switch tactics, and isn't acceptable behavior. Since Unisys cannot cause the whole Web to change to a new format no matter how obnoxious they act, they should lose LZW. They did not adequately warn adopters that they were going to be exercising extremely arbitrary control over access to LZW at the time that it was being widely adopted, and it's too late to un-adopt it.
If you think inferior technology is easily supplanted by different technology, are you using a computer that uses near and far pointers?
> can they sue MILLIONS of people?
Yes, they could. And they'd win. The law (unfortunately) is on their side (and thousands of claims in small claims court would likely net them millions with little cost -- well worth it).
If you oppose software patents but are not politically inclined, please at least do your part to make patented software (and, apparently, patented file formats) obsolete by not using them.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The spirit of Free software says that if you want to build a better mousetrap, shut the fuck up and build it.
Sure. Then when the patent holder comes beating upon your door and oh-so-politely informs you that your mousetrap has violated such-and-such patents, you can just hand over your firstborn son.
You've missed the point with patents. The reason everyone is so upset with Unisys and other software patent holders is that we can't build our mousetraps any more.
What a patent does is not very well understood by the average person, even the average technical person. Unlike a copyright (which covers the expression of an idea) a patent gives the holder total and unlimited control over an idea. If you use that idea to write a program, you're violating the patent. Even if you come up with the idea independently you're violating the patent.
Any program that creates an LZW-compressed GIF file is in violation of the Unisys patent. Unless it's licensed. That means that there's no way you can create GIF files with free software without violating the patent, at least if Roblimo's interpretation of this Unisys PR guy is correct. (1: Free software must be free for commercial use. 2: Unisys will not give free licenses for LZW "technology" for commercial use. Ergo 3: Free software cannot use LZW "technology", and 4: Free software cannot produce LZW-compressed GIF images. QED.)
So, while I'm not one of the ones who blasted Unisys in e-mail, I do understand and support the position (albeit not the tactics) of those who did the blasting. There is a reason for it, which you'd do well to research. I suggest The League for Programming Freedom as a starting point.
NSlookup output
unisys.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = bbmail1.unisys.com
unisys.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = eamail1.unisys.com
The probe:
[erics erics]$ telnet bbmail1.unisys.com 25
Trying 192.63.108.35...
Connected to bbmail1.unisys.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 bbmail1.unisys.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.5/8.8.5; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:21:53 GMT
quit
221 bbmail1.unisys.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
[erics erics]$ telnet eamail1.unisys.com 25
Trying 192.61.103.80...
Connected to eamail1.unisys.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 eamail1.unisys.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.5/8.8.8; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:22:15 GMT
quit
221 eamail1.unisys.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
Hmm. They don't use freeware. Ok Yeah Right Whatever.
Well that just about covers any use of GIFs in my software. Unless you're employed and can pay for your software yourself you can't even use GIFlib. Besides, GIF sucks for most anything I would use it for. As long as Unisys regards Linux as hackerware and not the real world, they probably won't sue a commercial Linux site.
Unisys people get fired if they stop thinking about their client's problems. Maybe if they weren't required to use Win NT they wouldn't have to think about their client's problems all night. That OS will break you for sure.
"Many people think that Unisys has given permission for distributing free software to make GIF format. Unfortunately that is not what Unisys has actually done. Here is what Unisys actually says about the matter:
In other words, Unisys may allow the community to develop a program like the GIMP, but it can't be included in the Red Hat Boxed Set, or even the Cheapbytes $1.99 Debian CD, without Red Hat and Cheapbytes each paying royalties. This is NOT a good solution. Again, according to the GNU website, this turns Red Hat and Debian into "semi-free" operating systems. "[T]he distribution terms for the operating system as a whole are the conjunction of the distribution terms for all the programs in it. Adding one semi-free program to the system would make the system as a whole just semi-free. [...] Including one semi-free program in an operating system would cut off commercial CD-ROM distribution for it."
This is not a reasonable solution. I encourage everyone to convert their GIFs to JPEGs or PNGs instead. A good PNG overview site can be found at http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/. Good luck!
Well, I followed your link to the partial history of UniSys. I'm sorry for Cheryl, and I guess she really needs her job. But if the e-mailers had anything like that experience, then they don't need apologizing for. These UniSys guys wouldn't be polite to save their lives. They wouldn't be kind to their own mothers. Etc.
I have not been sympathetic to UniSys for many years, but it's been quite awhile since I've had quite such a reason to despise them. I will not recommend them as a business partner under any circumstances (except, perhaps, to MicroSoft...they have a way with business partners that seems appropriate here).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
THEY didn't subject the secretary to abuse, the people who sent the abuse did. You need some remedial classes in the concept of personal responsibility.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
What if I'm using a library like GD that creates GIFs on the fly? As far as I know, GD has no non-free alternative. I'd like to be able to pay Unisys a reasonable royalty to make my use of GD legal.
(Disclaimer: I don't currently use GD, but I recognize its usefulness for many projects).
D
----
I've made postings in the past that have encouraged advocates to use eloquent means of communicating their point of view, and I will continue to do so. However, I have to say that I don't really feel much sympathy for Unisys in this situation.
l , which by the way, contrary to the the present feature's author _is_ referenced on the slashdot article a few days ago, makes a disingenuous attempt to argue that they have a right to demand this sum of money because they developed it. While it may be true that they hold a patent on the LZW algorithm, they by no means developed it. It was developed by its predecessor Sperry.
. html
Publicly traded corporations are accountable to their stockholders, and the Unisys representative makes that clear. However, shareholder interests are not an absolute justification for corporate boorishness.
Attempting to exploit a patent to get an exorbitant cut of someone else's revenue stream is arguably one of the supreme examples of wrongheadedness. The whole strategy of demanding payment for use of a widespread and freely used (up to around 1995) technology smacks of opportunism and is more of an indicator that Unisys is so bereft of original ideas that they have to result to hustling for revenue.
Deriving revenue at any price is not always in the best interests of the shareholder. If the activity damages the reputation of the company so badly that it drives away future customers of more legitimate offerings, what is the long-term gain? What am I, as a potential customer of Unisys products and services, supposed to expect from a company that devotes so much energy to legal sabre rattling? Are they investing adequately to deliver high quality products? Will they price things as exhorbitantly as they do with their LZW patent racket?
The PR statement at http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.htm
An excellent history of this issue for those who are interested can be found here:
http://www.cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127giflzw
As for the secretary, I do feel sorry for her, but I know that putting up with that kind of garbage is part of the job. I used to work in software Technical Support and had my share of it. If Unisys' brass has any soul left, they would have enough sense to foot the bill for the flowers, and not just on Secretary's Day.
-- P.J.
Somebody pointed out that Unisys used a bait-and-switch technique; they didn't start enforcing their patent until it had already become an established standard and there were *TONS* of programs that used the LZW compression, etc...
By allowing these companies to do this, did Unisys temporarily abandon their patent? I know it's possible to lose trademarks and copyrights for stuff like this, but what about patents?
I can't really see a reasonable defense-- it would be kind of hard to claim that Unisys never knew about Netscape, Gimp, Microangelo, and a million other programs...
So my question is this: Can it be contested that Unisys abandoned their patent, and therefore gave up (some of) their rights to it?
Now this is the type of guy who makes us all look bad. You know nothing about diplomacy or the business world. You're the type of person who won't amount to anything worth any value simply because you have no sense of business.
Don't bother replying telling me how much money you make or how many things you've bought in your 'successful' little world. You have a small mind and I don't wish to speak with you.
Now this is the type of guy who makes us all look bad. You know nothing about diplomacy or the business world. You're the type of person who won't amount to anything worth any value simply because you have no common sense.
Don't bother replying telling me how much money you make or how many things you've bought in your 'successful' little world. You have a small mind and I don't wish to speak with you.
Serving them well? Over the decades UniSys has offended probably millions of people (I may be overestimating here). Of these, many have probably eventually ended up in positions where they choose who to do business with. I doubt that many would intentionally choose a firm that had in the past changed the implicit terms of a business deal. I wouldn't consider it smart. (This is a reference back to the original CompuServe/gif dispute.)
They certainly have acted in a way that could have been calculated to prevent folk from forgetting that original... tactic. I.e., their untrustworthyness has been sporadically refreshed in the public eye, without ever being given quite enough time to be totally forgotten. Operant conditioning teaches that this is a much more effective technique that continuous training.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Algorithm patents are a crock. Patents are a legal mechanism to protect the invention of machines, not ideas; a patent specifically cannot cover (a) processes and (b) mathematical formulae, among other things. An algorithm is both a process and a mathematical formula, so it cannot be covered by a patent.
The fact that algorithm patents have been awarded by the US Patent Office is the result of money and business interests winning out over the letter of the law.
~k.lee
(remove nospam for email)
Oh the "culture of the Internet" oh here's a big laugh. Here's news for you. I've been on the net since '92 (Okay not nearly as long as some of you but a lot longer than most) and I'll tell you right now, unfortunately, the culture of the Internet is about money. UNISYS is right inline with the culture of the Internet, Get Paid. Domain squatters, eBay, Amazon, and yes, RedHat, this is what the net is about now. Long gone are the days of research and freedom. Even Linux is about money now. (if it weren't for the GPL we'd really be up the creek wouldn't we?)
UNISYS doesn't have to give away free licenses, they dont have to be nice to us in the face of hostile ridicule. They COULD limit their license only to $500 graphics packages, but they dont. This guy probably just got out of a meeting with his poor secretary who was harassed by all you fools and you dont expect him to derride the free software community? Thanks to more childish antics on the part of the Free Software zealots we have alienated yet more people. I'd like to say that I've turned a few people into Linux advocates since I started running it in 93. If I could only teach them tact.
-Rich
Since, the majority of Red Hat shares are held by employees there, I doubt this is gonna happen anytime soon.
He said gif->png, not png->gif. It's gif creation which needs a license, not extraction.
didn't we go through this a few years back with Compuserve. I thought they owned the patent and were threatening to sue everyone.
Pork is not a verb
So how does an advertising supported site, like /. or any of the other Andover.Net sites, support the PNG format? Ad banners == GIFs. Tell an advertiser you'll only accept his banners in PNG format and he'll say, "You want me to Pee iN What?"
really? wow... that's reallywow.
I believe that that is a logical extrapolation from the justification embedded in the constitutional context that justifies the existence of the patent system. It's not the only possible extrapolation, but it is one of the most reasonable, and is certainly much more reasonable than the current law and practices. I don't have the precise wording to hand, or I'd quote it, but it is in the constitution. Search it for patent and you'll be within a few words of the sentence I'm talking about.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That is, they can patent the new model, but it would be perfectly legal to produce the old model with the expired patent.
The new patent covers the changes, but does not extend the old.
To me, the idea of owning an algorithm is ridiculous. Image if Newton upon inventing Calculus, had patented it, so any calculations involving his methods would require a payment to him. An algorithm is a mathematical reality, it belongs to the laws of how the Universe operates, not to a person.
. htm
There is an excellent FAQ on the LZW at:
http://www.cpe.surrey.ac.uk/support/faq/gif_lzw
They explain how Unisys got the patent in the first place. Terry Welch (the W in LZW) extended the research of Lempel and Zev while working for Sperry Corporation. Sperry obtained the patent in 1985, before merging with Burroughs to form Unisys. My question, what do Lempel and Zev think of this?
Patents, whether for software or mousetraps, must be novel and unintuitive to an expert in the field. You just can't do it in a different way and expect a patent to hold up. The US Patent office works by issuing a patent, then seeing if it holds up.
When the LZW was invented, it was novel and unintuitive. Thus it qualified for a patent. This patent has also been upheld over time. It may seem a trivial algorithm now, but it wasn't then.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think slashdot should stop using GIFs,
Get real. I highly doubt Slashdot would do an idealistic thing like this. This is about money. For Slashdot to be legal, all they have to do is use a licensed piece of software to create their gifs. For Slashdot to be "right," they would have to not use GIFs, not have any banner-ad animated GIFs, etc. And that's not going to happen -- too much work for nothing but a "moral" gain.
Don't get me wrong, it would be great -- but it's not going to happen. (And for people complaining about Unisys not 'defending' this patent: it covers GIF creation. You're thinking to yourself, "well, I didn't pay for this GIF creation software, and Unisys never said anything." That's probably because you pirated a commercial piece of software that DOES have a license. (I know there are plenty of free ones, but most people reading this are using pirated copies of licensed software.)
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?