Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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!"
(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 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
I thought GIMP used libungif to produce non-LZW compressed GIFs, thus avoiding the whole patent problem?
pooptruck
This demonstrates that Slashdot does more than simply direct readers to organizations that do the reporting.
Thanks for calling them, Rob! Good job. Slashdot needs more of this sort of thing.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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)?
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.
...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_
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 $5000 fee.
The answer? Realise Unisys's patent and subsequent ``offer'' for what they are: further abuse of the patent system to get a few more dollars from an idea that just simply isn't worth what they're asking.
If both PKZIP and Gzip use the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, why can PKZIP compress multiple files into one archive, and then extract them all, or extract an individual file separately, while Gzip can only compress and extract a single file. If PKZIP can use LW to compress multiple files, why can Gzip only do one at a time? (yes, i know you can first tar your multiple files and gzip the tar file, but gzip is still only compressing one file, the tar file, and you can't extract the individual original files either...you have to un-gzip and then un-tar everything).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
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 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.
'cause he's dead....
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
----
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...
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.
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
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.
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?
"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!
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
----
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.
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