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Are You Ready For Burn All GIFs Day?
ESR writes "Are you ready for Burn All
GIFs Day?. On November 5, webmasters all over the world will
convert their sites to eliminate all GIFs. Please join this
effort and show Unisys that the net will not tolerate its sleazy
attempt at a $5000-per-site shakedown based on the LZW patent.
For tools to make converting your entire site easy, see the
gif2png home
page. "
I don't have the article offhand, but GNotices had something a while ago about how GNOME was converting the official documentation to PNGs/JPGs, and the lack of DocBook support. Apparently, they had already created a patch (or had one far along), and sent it back upstream. So there's not much of a worry there.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
I have two comments to make about this.
Number one, I think this excessive worry about whether PNG support in existing browsers is sufficient, is another instance of this sin of ``worrying about appearance more than about content'' pointed out by ESR in his HTML Hell Page. The whole idea of having transparency in images seems dubious at best.
Even if you insist on having transparent images, please don't let the fact that PNG browser support is not perfect prevent you from using them anyway. If you do, it never will be perfect (spell ``vicious cycle''). This (refusing PNG's because browsers don't fully support them) is a form of bugware: don't indulge in bugware. Just like you should write correct HTML even though buggy HTML might look better on some (or even on all) browsers. (One canonical example of this is — which I insist on using even though Netscape — under Linux at least — bugs on it.)
Secondly, I have a proposal for action, to show how ridiculous this whole patent issue is. Create a small image that reads something like ``PATENTS SUCK''. Draw it on a piece of paper. Get a copy of the GIF standard, and do the LZW compression by hand. This is not nearly as hard as Huffman, it should be doable if the image is small enough. Then distribute the image as widely as possible. Even better: sell it, so you can claim you made a commercial use of it.
Suddenly your brain is worth $5000. Impressive isn't it?
} I tried taking all my scans & videocaptures and
} saving them to PNG format...
} Unfortunately the images, compared to saving
} JPEG files with compression set to 1(at least
} in PSP) resulted in UNGODLY huge file sizes
No surprise there. PNG is for computer graphics.
JPEG is for natural images. You need both in
your toolbag.
a) If you created your GIF with licensed products (like Photoshop) the use of GIFs on your site is covered.
b) This issue is terribly old, nearly ancient, and *HAS* been addressed by Unisys. I'm no friend of patent whores, but to be fair to Unisys, the Gif2Pingers are blowing this way out of proportions.
c) PNG would have replaced GIFs a long time ago, if the PNG advocates would realize that there are platforms out there than PCs - and that certain browsers do NOT support PNG, and that PNG support in some browsers is spotty at best.
d) The same goes for pulling the head out of the ass, and providing bowers plugins for both main browsers, for all three main platforms, Mac, PC and Unix.
I'd have switched a long time ago, if platform support were there - so far, pNG is a nice technology, but nothing much beyond that, if it means cutting out a majority of my browser users.
Harry
I guess you haven't been paying attention.
./netscape ./netscape
One more time:
perl -pi -e 's:ANIMEXTS1:ANIMEXTZ1:'
perl -pi -e 's:NETSCAPE2:NOTSCAPE2:'
Run that AFTER you Fortify to 128 bit (you DO Fortify those weak 56 bit browsers, right?) and then Netscape will show it ONCE and then stop.
I have experienced this problem with some program (can't remember which) too, but I have never experienced that with gif2png or pnmtopng.
So I don't know what you are doing wrong, but switching to gif2png or pnmtopng is probably a pretty good fix - and gif2png can handle a whole directory at a time.
Back to the topic of GIF burning:
Most people have probably made their GIF files with a licensed program (or have had them made in a non-software-patent country), so there are probably not many people, if any, this whole LZW licensing story will touch.
We should, despite this, fight software patenting in general (those of us who believe it is wrong). But I can't see there is any point in wacking Unisys all the time. It looks more like witch-hunting than sensible action. What about MIT, Microsoft, IBM, and all the other companies who also hold software patents?
I have decided to keep my old GIF files around together with the PNG versions of the images. Using content negotiation and the MultiViews setting in Apache, I leave the actual choice of PNG or GIF to my visitors.
Jacob (who lives in a software patent free country :)
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.
The original poster said he was talking about IP in general, not just software patents. You're right; patents aren't too useful in the software industry, because usually by the time they're granted the idea has already been copied by the entire industry and trying to enforce your patent accomplishes very little other than the generation of bad will.
Copyrights are essential to software though, especially GPLed software. It's the copyright holder who decides what license to release a program under. If copyright laws were abolished, Microsoft would have the same rights to your code as you do, and could legally take your GPLed code and use it in closed source software.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I converted my whole site from GIF to PNG a while back. IE5 works great, Mozilla breaks on the transparencies (not alpha channel), that is, binary transparency for PNG is still broken. You can see my bug report, and vote for it at: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_ bug.cgi?id=13627. It seems the mozilla folk (who I love) are very concerned with DOM, XML, and HTML standard support...but have left out the PNG standard as a _fundamental_ required building block of the web. I think full PNG support should be as core as HTML, and I eagerly await full support in my favorite browser.
There's an article at evolt.org ( Don't Panic About GIFs ) on this subject, with a few added comments /.-style from readers.
One of these additions suggests that the Unisys patent is not enforceable in Australia (among a few other major countries). I encourage people to read the article linked, and (even though it was posted back in August) feel free to add further information likely to be considered relevant.
Please note that evolt.org is a resource largely for Web designers, so even though there are many OSS-related postings, a lot of the content is aimed at those who produce their images on Windows/MacOS machines. As such, the original article is more of a "if you are using Photoshop, then calm down - you're OK!" type thing, than applicable to those using free image-manipulating software.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
There's been a PNG patch for Xv available since
1995. Xv itself hasn't been upgraded because
in order to keep GIF support without paying
the tax it has to have been released before
January 1, 1995, according to the original
UNISYS manifesto. But since the grandfather
clause seems to be gone now, Xv's only choices
seem to be to eliminate GIF support or to pay up.
Moderators, please refrain from flagging information "Informative" unless you actually know it's correct. MNG is the new PNG-like standard for animation, while PNM is "portable anymap" - the simple truecolor format for Jef Poskanzer's pbmplus package.
http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapps.html
(as pointed out in one of the refered pages)
Seriously, is there enough browser support for PNG so that we can do this? I know IE5/NS4/Mozilla at least will work fine... but how about a little backwards compatibility?
The subject icon for this (and most other) stories are gifs... My question is, why is Slashdot, one of the most prominent Linux/Open Source websites, still using gifs?
It'd be really cool if sites that are funded by banner adds would require that the ads be .png or .jpg images. This would reduce the obnoxiousness and load time of the ads immensely.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
"Notice that the animated GIFs do not come from Slashdot's servers themselves."
IIRC Slashdot uses Adfu, Rob's open source ad server. When Andover took over Adfu when they picked up Slashdot so Andover might still be liable. In other words, yes the ads are run on Slashdot servers so we should all contact Andover and ask them to burn the GIFs! Actually, we should talk to Rob, because he would probably still be in charge of Adfu itself and would be the one who'd have to rewrite the script.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Of course we in Europe can fart in the general direction of your software patents. (I'm sorry Rob just don't put Monty's foot at the top of the page !). Ha Just you guys wait for my patent on Algebra 101 (in the US only!) Nee, bring me a shrubbery!!!!!
There are a couple of problems I can see with this going off right, although I completely agree with the initiative at its essence.
For one, as far as I've been able to tell, Unisys hasn't made any real attempts to ENFORCE this since making that initial announcement (I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong).
The second issue is that PNG support in web browsers isn't perfect, and from what I've seen, animated PNG support is nonexistant... is it really feasible to do this now ? Imagine the logical extreme... java/javascript ad banners... AAARRARARRRGH !!!!!
Again, I completely agree with this initiative, and long-since scrapped all my GIF usage a long time ago, and I've been lobbying my school (Georgia Tech) to do the same in all class curricula and on their web page. But, I just don't think that there's a workable alternative for ALL usage of GIFs right now.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I remember a few months ago or so, there was a slashdot poll asking whether or not your browswer supported png, and I remember if not the majority, then atleast a big chunk of people's browsers weren't compatible. I remember comments also of people saying that their broswer support was kind of wack.
Besides, didn't the people say they werent going to press charges anyways?
Joseph?
From the userinfo page: [greendot.gif] :) I think slashdot will be going through more modifications in the next 5 days :)
hmmm...
OFTC: By the community, for the community
} * "In particular, GIF is well adapted for online .. does this mean that
} communications because of its streamability and
} progressive display capability. PNG shares those
} attributes. (Stress added).
} ====Can some one tell me
} PNG can support animation?? what does
} "progressive display capability" mean ??====
It refers to the ability to display a low-resolution
version of the image followed by increasing amounts
of detail. Not animation. For animations, see MNG.
I think it makes sense for us all to switch to PNG now, because if we don't switch, good PNG support will never become de rigeur for web browsers.
We have to force the issue.
Since PNG is also technically superior (it compresses better), good support in browsers will mean that nobody uses GIFs any longer. And people will notice when a format goes out of use due to software patent problems.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
What a fascinating suggestion. Bruce Sterling, are you listening? :-)
It's late, I'm angry, filter accordingly. Learn what is happening before continuing the joke this has become! If your GIFs were produced with software which is licensed, you are OK. I make my GIFs with Photoshop or steal them from the web. Photoshop is licensed, e.g. I'm OK. I thought this was covered here before. Read the news for Christ's sake!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Not really, if you have the same palette the PNG will be smaller than the GIF nearly every time. The only time when the GIF will be smaller is when you're eithor A: Working with 2 pixel images where one pixel is white and the other is black or B: You've images happen to be one of the specific patterns of bits which LZW is optimal at compressing.
This means that, for all real life intents and purpoises, the use of PNG/JPEG will *always* be smaller than GIF.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
} I can see the 1000's of emails to rob now.... } "what the hell happened to all the icons?"
And 3 or 4 dozen emails... "what the hell happened to
my banners?"
On the other hand, patents, copywrights, and the like provide a service by preserving the ideas and technology behind the inventions and writings. This is actually, AFAIK, one of the reasons these things were developed, so that inventions, books, etc would not be lost forever when they stopped being sold, or something weird happened.
Of course, there are a lot of people who make a living by developing new things, and I think they have a right to profit from the sale of those things.
I think that in our zeal for free software, we easily forget that legal protections of IP do serve a purpose.
Of course, I think this whole GIF thing is total BS, but that is, as you say, because of the "bait and switch," not because they are trying to charge for their patent.> Does LZW expire anytime soon?
As I recall from the last time we saw this, it expires in 2003, which is why UniSys wants to crack down on things now -- to get the last drops of blood out of the stone.
Ditto on what others have said about this not constituting being in the public domain. When you patent something, you make public all information about it, but no one can sell it until the patent expires. If you want to keep is secret, you do not patent it, you lock the information in a vault and hope nobody figures it out on their own.
Also, why do you feel it neccesary to put three lines of white space between each of your paragraphs and/or sentances? Not everyone has a huge, high res screen and can afford wasted space like this, you know. Think a little before you post about things like this.
This is a chicken or the egg argument. Except that as others have said, there is no widespread support for PNG. IE on the PC supports it, more or less. It doesn't exist as far as IE Mac is concerned. Some versions of Netscape 4 (4.03 IIRC) support it, but it is buggy across platforms and versions. And of course, there is no animated version (MPNG isn't even finalized AFAIK).
Now, if you are a major site are you going to risk alienating your audience and advertisers with content your viewers cannot access, simply because some misunderstood argument about patent enforcement is being bandied about? I don't think so. You won't be a major site for long.
Only when the format was a strongly entrenched de facto standard ...
You mean only when it entrenched as a de facto BBS standard. Unisys has been trying to enforce it patents since the late 80s, long before the WWW days.
Most BBS standards died along with the medium -- GIF unfortunately survived. Blame Mosaic and Netcape for foisting a dubious standard on to the World Wid Web at it's inception. There was an opportunity there to introduce a new image format, and it was balked.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, for graphics that small, size doesn't matter much anyway. Network packets come in large chunks of bytes, so the additional time spent downloading 144 vs. 45 bytes is negligible unless you're downloading a thousand of them-- in which case you'd probably be better off combining them into one image so the compression can exploit redundancies.
~k.lee
(remove nospam for email)
should be slashdot :) .gifs everywhere... on the subject of browser support, last i checked, most browsers support .jpg, which, although suboptimal, will do until people get their collective arses into gear and add decent png support. while people are content to sit back and continue to use .gifs, why SHOULD browsers implement a new file format? .. upgrades suck, but i know one of the main reasons people upgraded to netscape 2.0 was things like background images, frames, java, and the like. no difference here... smash (at work, not logged in. my page has .PNG throughout :)
Unisys has been trying to enforce their patents since the BBS days -- I've been reading these Unisys-is-getting-evil-with-GIFs threads since back when I had a 1200 bps modem.
A brief bit of history - Compuserve published the GIF format in the 1980s without regard to the fact that it used patented technology. The "minicomputer giant", Unisys (formerly Sperry Univac) was so out of it that they didn't realize that their algorythm was all over the online world until the late eighties. Then they started to demand that authors fork over money. The big guys (Adobe, Corel) have been paying Unisys for over a decade.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Jpeg 2000 might not be finished as of yet, but I suspect that it will have a good chance of being a standard in the future (just as jpeg/mpeg is today), and even greater, it has support for most about anything you'd want. From lossless to lossy compression and a whole range of other nifty things such as wavelets. Read up on it yourself, and then wonder what format you'd like your browser to support in the future...
PNG is a good thing, and has always been a good thing since it arrived, but I fear that it won't ever be a de facto standard. Sure, I want real transparency (GIF? Does masking at best, it's plain silly) and non LZW, but I won't recode any browsers (especially since I am using IE and can't stand Netrape/Mozilla with it's lack of design) nor will I recode any software packages (few of them seem to be able to save PNGs correctly && be of any use). On top of this, will there be a gateway that translates GIFs into PNGs? Because as far as I know, I can't make everyone use PNG...
Once again, I hope those that has invested in JPEG will make use of it, and thus make it widespread.
B) Patents (and copyright) have everything to do with a free market. You can't have a free market in information-based things without an artificial monopoly, because the marginal cost is zero. Free markets only work when the goods in the market have certain properties, and software does not have those properties. If you want to use a free market to determine how software production resources should be allocated, rather than, say, having the government decide it by funding software development with a tax on something, you've got to artificially give software the properties that real property has.
| The MNG format (basically an animated PNG) is
| currently being worked on. It's not done yet, | but...
The format is done. The applications aren't.
But ImageMagick's implementation of MNG-LC is
fairly complete.
Read the spec at http://www.cdrom.com/pub/mng/
Mac IE 5.0 betas do not support pngs at all, and the Netscape 4.x implementation is broken enough to require plugins.
GIFs are also far more compact than PNGs; you can have GIFs with two or three colors. I don't believe PNGs have this ability.
Wrong, PNG has support for paletted images with 2, 4 and 8 bits per pixel. Moreover, the compression method is the only thing that will determine the resulting file size. That's why PNG beats GIF all the time, it has a better method including clever filtering as a pre-compression step.
JPEG is obviously not practical to replace GIF, the images are larger and lack the indexed color of GIFs as well.
JPEG's are for continuous-tone images (== photos), GIF's are aimed at pictures with large areas of the some colors and relatively few colors, e.g. cartoons. That's why PNG and JPEG hardly overlap, it has nothing to do with the size of the image. Palettes wouldn't make sense in JPEG, the compression method in it works on truecolor data only.
| GIFs are also far more compact than PNGs; you
| can have GIFs with two or three colors. I don't
| believe PNGs have this ability.
In fact, you can have a 3-color PNG, but with
GIF you can't. GIF palettes must be a power
of 2 in length. You can have a 150-color PNG
but with GIF you have to waste 105 palette entries
if you have 150 colors.
It's hopeless to expect reform from within... the patent crisis is not even on the national agenda. The average person has never even heard of the issue.
The only viable medium-term strategy is containment. US-style software patents (and business model patents and other bogosity) cannot be allowed to spread to other countries. Containment efforts should therefore shift away from the US and towards other countries and cultures.
It would be very helpful, for instance, if influential Islamic clerics could examine the issue of patents on mathematical formulas and business models and determine if they are compatible with the Quran and Islamic teachings.
I'm not Muslim and have no idea... but usury and other practices are disallowed under Islamic law, so it's possible they would disallow software patents and issue a fatwa or legal opinion to that effect.
Broadly speaking, patents that cover small human ingenuities and artifices should be OK... but if the universe is the creation of God, then asserting ownership over fundamental laws of nature and mathematical formulas seems a trifle blasphemous.
A finding that software patents are un-Islamic would, in effect, permanently immunize the Islamic countries from this nonsense. It would create an invulnerable "patent haven" that would set an example for the rest of the world.
Remember, containment kept Communism in check until it collapsed under its own weight. It should work for "patent disease" as well... but it could take decades, and things will get worse before they get better.
Send RMS to Saudi Arabia... I'm not kidding.
IE and Netscape are too large for their customers to download on 14.4 lines in addition to per minute charges. Until Mozilla ships (hopefully < 2M) it won't be possible for them to convert to PNG.
The only other option I can think of is a plugin to handle the PNG images. Does anyone know of such a plugin?
First - PNG's can't technically actually replace GIF's because PNG's can't do what GIF's can do, like animation and simple transparency support. Without a solid, _single_, replacement file format, it's going to go the way of all newer technology - slowly being picked up by the early adopters that don't mind all the problems and then five to eight years later by the mainstream.
Second - we can't expect everyone to convert to a new format if we haven't actually supplied folks with a decent toolset, which includes easy to use tools to create animated [P|M]NGs. Even if people could convert their GIFs to animated PNGs they'll want to keep using their time-tested tools and not go through another conversion.
Ok, the way a patent works is that you give away the specs to your new invention to the public in exchange for a 17 year government-enforced monopoly on that invention.
That's not exactly how it's enforced/done now, but that's the idea.
So, they can try to take your money, and PNG is technically superior to GIF anyway.
Make the world a better place... convert your GIFs to PNGs.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
There will be no decrease in quality as both GIF and PNG use lossless compression methods while JPEG (at least the most widely used part of it, it has a lossless mode, too, which is used in medical imaging) is lossy - it gets much better compression results at the costs of not recreating the exact original, which isn't visible to human beholders whenever the quality settings used to encode weren't too extreme.
First, two disclaimers: 1) IANAL 2) There is no way I'm switching to PNG until it has browser support--sorry, GIFs are part of my living. (It'd be like asking you guys to switch to a new, .01a build of a kernel just because Linus suddenly became evil.)
Anyway, here's my thoughts: If company Foo makes Widget illegally using a process patented by company Bar, the purchasers of Widget are not liable for the illegal actions of company Foo.
Now, with the players substituted: If Developer Joe's software uses LZW w/o a license from Unisys, End User Jane is not liable for the actions of Developer Joe.
Right? Or am I just stupid. (Sorry--on a MAJOR candy corn buzz right now.)
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
nyet, comrade
PNG support in M10 is terrible. PNGs render inline, but slowly. Alpha seems to be binary instead of 8 bits, and gamma is ignored completely.
0 1 - just my two bits
PNG supports GIF style transparancy, as well as a so called "Alpha" channel that allows for each pixel to have a varying level of transparancy.
Problem is, current browser support is, well, crap - with the single exception of Mozilla. I usually just use the GIMP to make a non-transparent image that will end up looking the same as it would look if it were transparent.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The deflate algorithm can be used in TIFF, it's only poorly supported (not really a fault of the TIFF viewers and editors, the format is a real mess, to fully support it is almost impossible). See libtiff for a free library that can deal with it.
PNG's superscede TIFF's, not GIF's. Lets put Deflate into GIF and call it GIF99a.
ARGH! No, let GIF die. PNG is very well designed (checksums, great specs, the folks who created it really knew what they did), so please make it your choice!
When the world needed, and wanted, a free alternative to GIF many, many people went to work on a solution. But PNG had ZLib. That and the fact that its list of features covered everything a web designer could ever want. Other developers stopped working on their formats.
Slowly the spec was released. It was immediately clear that the spec was another 'ideal' format for lossless graphics that was created by people who didn't know or care what Gifs were being used for. We had been promised a replacement for Gif and this was not it. Sure it could support true-color with embedded gamma settings. But could it do animation? Of course not. Then there was MNG. To replace GIF, which takes about 20K worth of C source code (a little for for animation), I now need to support two formats, and add 120K to my application's binary. Hell, even the reference implementation didn't even work right for months and people just reading the spec were supposed to implement it.
Frankly everybody should just sit back, shut up and live with it. There was a window of opportunity to quickly create a replacement for GIF, but that day is gone. The patent expires in a few years anyway. PNG is an impressive format, but it is not the replacement for GIF we wanted or needed. We we burned by the PNG format, why should we now burn the only real cross platform lossless format. It sucks, but this is tech.
As I remember, Unisys's line was that the $5000 was, in effect, insurance that if, by mistake, you were using unlicensed GIF generators, they wouldn't come after you. They never said they *would* come after you, or check up on you, but it was just insurance in case you didn't know and wanted to be safe.
Not their words of course, but that's how I remember it.
--
Infuriate left and right
You may want to let them know that you are in compliance with the patent now. Contact information can be found at: http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzwfaq.html Maybe if they get enough feedback, they'll figure out that their business strategy wasn't all that smart.
Backup. Reality Checkpoint - we don't have any other way to make platform-independent transparent images.
gif and jpeg are the only two de facto image standards that interoperate with (most) modern browsers today. Does MSIE support the png format? Last time I looked it didn't. the png format also has a few bugs (maybe it's gimp ! png, but I'm not sure). If you're running a site that has any complex documents on it, you may very well wind up redesigning large portions of your site to make your site gif free.
--
Now, are there any other deprecated formats, of any kind or in any use, that we should get rid of?
.exe, .com, .bat, .386, .vxd, .sys...
.Z, .lzh, .zoo, maybe even .gz (I have a particular fondness for bzip2).
:-)*
.dll,
.zip,
ISA PnP
??????~?.???
.swp (separate swap partitions make too much sense. Fragmenting and adding an unnecessary layer of processing (FAT16/32) is evil)
.htm
The use of extensions as the *only* method of determining filetype. I was quite surprised that Windows Commander 32 would simply go into a compressed archive even if it was named ".jpg"
It all should be done by magic.
Oh yeah, how about the placement of the "close window" button right next to "maximise window?"
What do you mean? I have converted a number of GIF's to PNGs... and the PNGs are always *smaller* than the GIFs. Were you imagining that you'd have to convert them all to JPEGs?
The whole thing is silly. If any of the anti-Unisys crowd had bothered reading the material at Unisys' site, they'd see that the real beef that Unisys has is with the GIF generating code. Basically, sites that generate their GIFs on the fly via unlicensed code or use images generated with unlicensed apps are liable. Others are not. For those that are using the various free sources for their GIF generating code, it seems likely that they can be held legally accountable. I'm not worried about the stuff that I've done in GIF format since I know it to be legally generated.
As I type this, there is an animated GIF ad just above the "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." slogan on my screen. Will Slashot ban GIFs and sacrifice the ad revenue? Or are we about to be embarrassed, thoroughly, when Burn All GIFs day is a bust?
Unfortunately, the organizers didn't do the ground work, like distributing Java or Javascript code that could provide advertisers with alternate means for doing animated ads, plus conversion scripts to instantly turn an animated ad into an alternative form. Yes, this would have required work. But since that work wasn't done, the open source community is about to be embarrassed as every webmaster who depends on ad revenue ignores the call.
As cool as PNG is, the browser support just isn't there. What many people don't know is that you needn't use LZW compression to use GIF. Gifsicle can even make animated GIFs that use an alternative (run length I think) compression
The resulting GIFs are about twice as large, but they should work in any browser that supports GIF, and they don't use the patented technology.
I should add that since I've made some minor contributions towards gifsicle, I have some bias towards it. There are probably other programs that can create such GIFs also.
--Steve (comments@vrml3d.com)
IE (4.5) doesn't support it *at all*
This is only partially correct. IE can't view PNG's by itself, but you can set the preferences to view them with the Quicktime plug-in. However, this won't work for PNG's on a web page. The Quicktime plug-in can only display PNG's by themselves, which is useless for most things. Visiting a web site that uses PNG's will just display broken images in IE 4.5 no matter how the preferences are set.
This is a fine example of open-sourcers overreacting in a psudo-millitaristic manner. There is no need to burn anything.
Unisyss invested resources in developing LZW, the algorithm used by GIFs. Their owners (investors) have every right to cash in on GIFs. If there is a better alternative for the price, the market will adjust, and folks will use other compression formats. This market really does work -- with or without virtual pyros.
Relax, and choose the options that work best for you. Everything will work itself out; the fastest and biggest bank of information (um... that would be the Internet) doesn't need help from geeks in serch of a cause.
Perhaps instead of investing time and energy on Unisys and GIFs, we could be writing drivers for the open source community...
- Tom Vitolo
Just a guy who likes computers (and has a degree in Economics)
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I agree. Lets see some examples of unisys enforcing this patent, then I'll get rid of my semi-transparent pornography.
Well, according to the burnallgifs site, PNG transparency is still very poorly supported in most current web browsers: what happens is the transparent backgrounds come out black.
Not very cool, eh?
I don't understand how they can start enforcing their patent rights to gif89a compression after it has been in heavy public use for so long. This could be likened to MS giving a program away for free for a year, and then deciding to charge everybody that has used it $200.
While I strongly feel we need to abolish the Patent Office, as it no longer serves to common man, and I also tend to respect many of ESR's writings and his role as an open source advocate, I really object to this type of yellow journalism that is hype-oriented and does not convey an accurate picture of the truth. The last time this thread came up on /., I wrote off the sensationalism of every webmaster has to cough up $5000 simply as ignorance. /. revealed the truth on this matter and I find the continued dishonesty via omission to be reprehensible.
How is the open source movement to have any credibility when we choose to employ the same tactics as da man?
Alpha is indeed binary-only (see bug 3013)--and not on the fast track to improve much--but gamma is fully supported and works correctly. As for speed, I haven't noticed any particular problems there, but libpng 1.0.5 includes MMX code for fast PNG decoding on Windows, and libpng 1.0.6 (or 1.1.0?) will include corresponding code for Linux and other gcc/gas targets.
-- GRR: Newtware, PNG Group, AlphaWorld Map, Info-ZIP, Google cluster infrastructure,
Unfortunatly many sites today seem to have forgotten about the 8 second rule... You only have 8 seconds to capture the attention of someone browsing your site. And that includes load in time. GIFs tear the hell out of loadin time; being able to support a flexible palette is still a glorious idea and I know that GIFs have allowed me to create sites that load in in less that 4 seconds on 33.6 modems but with still really good graphics. While I might have a moral objection to GIF, I cant stop using them until I see an alternative that is able to give such small images. Because when you have 10-20 images 1k _does_ matter. Cheers, Secret Agent Conrad Uno
This is just plain stupid.
No one -- not a single person -- doing serious commercial Internet work would consider it for a moment. Why? Clients today (and busdev, marketing types when stuff is developed internally) still hold the 3.0+ rule as ironclad, and that rules out PNG.
For the tens of millions of "nothing" sites out there that together represent a tiny percentage of Internet traffic have that as their option, of course, since they have little traffic anyway. Losing a few percent to people with old browsers isn't going to hurt them.
PNG support is too spotty in the modern browsers to seriously do it anyway. They all seem to handle things like transparency differently, and things like that.
On the low-end of the internet bell curve, wanna-be designers are way to infatuated with their animated GIFS -- the late 90's version of the blink tag. They're certainly not going to switch and give up their beloved animated icons collection.
*shrug* Seems like a reactionary move that won't get anywhere. The effort wasted changing sites to a widely-incompatible format would be better spent writing to your congresspeople and getting these rediculous century-old patent laws changed.
slc.gif
title.gif
topicnews.gif
topicmovies.gif
topichardware.gif
topicslashdot.gif
topicus.gif
As for the freekin' blipvert, well..that's another story. ;)
Er, so, explain to me why you aren't converting to PNG? I just made a test image with the gimp. Gradient black/white from the top-right to bottom-left. 256x256. The PNG one was RGB, the GIF indexed (only because it couldn't RGB) then I made another indexed PNG just to be fair. Here are the results (All the same images):
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 21095 Oct 31 13:56 test.gif (GIF)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 1910 Oct 31 13:54 test.png (Indexed PNG)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 6412 Oct 31 13:58 test2.png (RGB PNG)
So does this mean you'll be converting all your pages to PNG now?
--
Reject
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Reject
reject@metaphorcity dot com
I agree that what Unisys proposed to do with LZW licensing is ridiculous, but to date I have not heard of a single website that has been forced to cough up the money. I don't think we have to worry about Unisys lawyers knocking on our doors anytime soon. While the elimination of GIFs might be the right thing to do, it just isn't feasable for most sites. It requires quite a bit of effort to convert a large site.
In most browsers, PNG support is incomplete at best, buggy at worst. The rendering time for PNGs is also far greater, especially if you have a slow machine.
GIFs are also far more compact than PNGs; you can have GIFs with two or three colors. I don't believe PNGs have this ability.
JPEG is obviously not practical to replace GIF, the images are larger and lack the indexed color of GIFs as well.
The intentions might be honorable, but most sites can't afford the additional time it takes to convert and the increased bandwith usage.
This idea is a little bit ahead of its time. Maybe if software support gets better and we can all afford the increased bandwidth, then it will time to dump GIF.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Gimp has gif code written by the venerable Adam D. Moss, who just so happens to be in the UK, out of reach of the LZW patent.
It's probably the best gif code in the world. Adam has also contributed to the gif handling in Mozilla.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
look, it seems that if PNG is to preserve the benefits that GIF provides, it must use some kind of fast and strong compression algorithm like Lempel-Ziv. If the compression is fundamentally different from GIF, then what kind of compression rates and speed are we expecting from the new algorithm? if it is fundamentally the same compression algorithm, what legal benefits does anyone gain from using this software? even according to the page, there is no consensus about whether this new program is even legal.
sh_
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
In reading their explanation, it seems that they're not going to actively police this. They say that if you've bought the tools which create GIF's, they're covered under license and you're fine. Their $5,000 / site fee is if you're unsure of what was used to make the GIF files and you want to be sure you comply.
I guess users of Photoshop are fine, it's just GIMP users that are effected by this. Oh, wait...
But as the Burn all GIF's page states, LZW is a patented algorythm that's inferior to superior and unpatented algorythms which is used to create obsolete GIF files.
My question is, why does anyone even care then? Use JPEG or PNG. Other formats exist. If you want to use GIF files for any reason, then there's a price to pay. That's either $5,000 for the "license" from unisys, or $49 for some cheapo program that you never need to install, just have handy to say that yes, you have a license... If you don't like their terms, there's plenty of other formats to use.
If you value compatiblity, then, it is their algorythm afterall. No matter how innane current patent laws seem, they are the law, afterall.
Did they choose Guy Fawkes day on purpose for this?
(For you Americans, this marks the day in history that conspirators tried to blow up the repressive British Parliament in the 13th century, by using large amounts of gunpowder; and this is the day we have our annual fireworks display)
The Docbook DTD and the associated DSSSL which are being extensively used in the open source community still use gif as the default format.
I don't think this has been brought up before, so here goes. Why doesn't the internet community come up with a single program that uses the LZW compression, pay UNISYS for the license, and then distrubute this program/api/sdk/whatever freely/more-cheaply-than-$5000 to other image software developers? This way, all the image software developers would only be responsible for creating images in some other intermediate format (that behaves *exactly* like a gif--transparency, animatability, etc) then feed it to the mentioned sdk/library, and out comes a real gif. This way, the only component in the chain that uses the LZW compression is the said library, which has already been licensed at the start.
It all stems from what UNISYS means by "creating" a gif image. Technically, the image creation software is not creating a gif, but something else.
Does this hold up legally?
-----------------
Your attention please everyone, if I could just say a few words... I would be a better public speaker.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I'd like to see that stupid hamsterdance.com get whats coming to it, no only does it suck now, imagine it with half assed png support. Thats if anything supports animated png. Maybe they'll be the first site to get nailed for $5000... if we're lucky...
good luck burning them, unless you print them out first...
maybe it should have been delete the gifs day...
oh well
I'm curious how exactly Unisys can determine exactly what tool was used to generate the GIF's on a site. And how are they going to tell whether that tool wasn't pirated?
I converted my pages over to PNG on general principles when Unisys started this. The only thing left in GIF format is a NetMechanic graphic, and that's hosted off of NetMechanic's servers. Unisys wants payment for that, they can talk to NetMechanic.
My problem with Unisys is that this is the third time they've changed their story. First, they put LZW compression forward to Compuserve when CIS was explicitly looking for an unencumbered graphics format. Then, when this format became popular, Unisys turned around and said that it's really encumbered, but we're only going to charge commercial vendors, not freeware. Now, they're saying they're going to charge freeware too, and individuals if you can't prove the software had a license. Yes, I know what Unisys is saying. I also know what their written statements say. They conflict, and in any conflict involving lawyers I believe only what's written on paper with a signature below it.
Long and short, I dislike Unisys's attitude and PNG does what I need and lets me avoid dealing with Unisys. No contest. Sorry, Unisys, as far as I am concerned you lose.
Several people have voiced an opinion that this burn all gifs day is an overreacton. They complain that we aren't ready for it yet. Well, we will never become ready if people refuse to use pngs. If there is a large enough response to BAGD, then that alone is progress toward a net where GIFs aren't needed. The more sites out there that use PNGs exclusively, the more pressure there is for Netscape and MS to release browser revisions which properly support the format. Without that pressure, we'll all have to wait for Mozilla and hope that everyone on the planet decides to use it over MSIE.
Personally, I'm all for it. GIF, as a graphic format, is pretty much deprecated and useless. The two uses there still are: ad-banners and tiny pictures on homepages. Yes, I would love to have transparency for PNG, but I can live without it. There are ways to circumvent the absence.
Of all the graphics I've done recently, they're just about anything but GIFs. Should it be grayscale or full-color, I just don't see the need for GIF-use any longer. It was a fine format once in its time, but evolution does happen. Even in computer world, where draggind the past along with is de facto.
True, Unisys can never enforce their license to the full. They don't even have to. There are much better formats available, and people are actually starting to use them.
As to the annoyance of potential java-banners... True, they are really horrible. The few I've witnessed are not easy for eyes and not the browsers either. Who ever said java should be kept on at all times? From personal experience it only hinders surfing. And I'm not the only one, this opinion seems to be commonly shared.
Actually, Unisys may be doing a big favor to the web community. By being greedy, they encourage the users to stop using GIFs in the first place. No, it's not the license itself but all the talk and noise it invariably generates among the public.
Now, are there any other deprecated formats, of any kind or in any use, that we should get rid of?
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Hey, anyone who has a copy of the Be operating system should check out a program I whipped up which will convert any image (for which a translator is installed on your system) into the png format. You can easily convert an entire folder of many image types to png in one easy move.
available at BeBits under graphics utilites
or here
Source is included and is in the public domain.
The basic fact is that the patent has not be enforced. Can it be ? I am not sure of this.
When one calls for such BIG changes many things have to be considered.
(*) How much infomartion on PNG has seeped onto the general public. Many know that GIF is patented, but about PNG ??
(*) Are you sure of atleast a moderate following ?? It is better not to remain silent and work underground, moving people than call for a BIG Burining session like this and see a flop happening.
(*) Does any one care ?? True GIF is patented.. but majority of people will just stick to it until a situation comes where pple start getting jailed.
(*) Well if GIF is patented, y cant we try to talk to pple concerned and get things sorted out. If SUN can go "Open Source" and MS can even think about being "Open Source", I dont think this issue is any tougher.
So what say u all ??
Manifest
... "follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind
The PNG format allows for full 8-bit alpha (transparency). However, most browsers don't yet support that feature. You can help convince the Mozilla engineers that full alpha support is A Good Thing. You can vote for that feature enhancement at this location (If nothing else, it is a good excuse to get a bugzilla account set up) :-)
I just made a test image with the gimp
Did someone pay for a license to use LZW compression in the gimp? If not then the gif you made doesn't use LZW compression which means the file will be larger than it would be if you used a program that supported LZW compression.
There appear to be several things which need to happen before such a boycott could proceed successfully:
Perhaps my biggest qualm is that the initial furor over Unisys has died down. If this had been organized earlier, maybe there would have been more positive reaction--and, I dare say, the mainstream media might have latched on to it!
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
It's not because I can't change my GIF's to PNG's (I can) nor that PNG's aren't supported (if you can't see them, complain to the site for not recognizing them as PNG's).
It's because the source code to GIF encoding/decoding is published here on the Internet AND in deadtree form. I can go to my public library and check out a copy of Windows Bitmapped Graphics and get the code to do GIF encoding/decoding using LZW. There's probably ten to twenty books that do this. Therefore, it's already wide-spread. I bet it would be in the public domain now.
I'm not a lawyer (someone get a lawyer) but I bet it would be nice if someone could take this tactic and nuke the claims Unisis has to charging site owners.
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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Fron the spec:
Pronunciation
PNG is pronounced "ping".
This is not always the case. I have real, actual images on my web site that get larger when converted to PNG. Your test, a smooth gradient, is exactly the sort of thing that GIF is very weak on.
And duplicating test, I find that Photoshop can produce an RGB JPEG with no noticeable artifacts that is 2.5K smaller than your RGB PNG[1].
Add in the problems that many browsers have with PNG images, and it doesn't start to look so attractive.
[1] If anyone wants to duplicate this with the GIMP, don't bother. It, unfortunately, has rather bad JPEG compression.
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The GIFs you've been converting to PNG, then, must have had 'lots' (relatively) of colours, then.
Try this: 10 x 10 pixel image, 2 colours, non-interlaced, then strip it down and save it as a GIF.
Do the same with a PNG. Then use pngcrush on it to make it as small as possible.
red-white.gif (2 colours in palette): 45 bytes
red-white.png (2 colours saved by PS): 182 bytes
red-white2.png (2 colours, by pngcrush: 144 bytes
For ultra-small graphics, PNG is not anywhere near as small byte-size as GIF.
I then looked at the images with IE, Netscape, Opera, and ACDSee (my default image viewer), and Netscape produced a _considerably_ lighter result. I didn't have to look closely or put the images side by side to notice it.
To be fair, I am using Netscape 4.08, because I haven't found a standalone browser later than that. But how many (non-techie) people do you know that are always hunting for the latest browser version? What about slightly older versions, like Netscape/IE 3.0? IE 4.0?
Right away, this little experiment tells me that we aren't yet ready to switch to PNG.
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Is set up their servers to server pngs to the ppl who can handle it and gifs to the ppl who don't.
.asp do it, just have whatever it is check the browser vendor and version against a table of support for the features in the particular graphic, and serve up the one that matches best.
Can't be too hard to have apache do most of it for you. Heck you could probably have your fancy
Could be expanded easily when browsers start handling translucency and animation correctly.
Need a Catering Connection
You will now explain what incentive companies have to create and release useful code and data if they can't sell it, and why it's fair that companies shouldn't be entitled to a return on their investment.
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Does anyone know of the legal status of an LZW compressed TIFF? Why isn't Unisys complaining about them? I know that LZW TIFFs are not nearly as promiment as GIFs, but they do exist. I mean, the GNU site just has JPEG images and all kind of notes about "no gifs due to patent problems" not "no LZW compressed images due to patent problems".
And that's supposed to mean something? Look a few millimeters to the right on this burnallgifs.org site, you'll see Unisys has since changed their position to any and all software/hardware.
Quicktime 4's infamous for grabbing PNG's. It happens on the Macs too.
But if you view them on Linux, or w/o any such plugins, they're fine.
I just wish QT4 had scroll bars. I use PNG's instead of TIFF's now, and they work very well.
---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I will, as soon as you explain how anyone currently makes any money at all in the software business WITHOUT patent enforcement.
Things seem to be working out fine for most people in the business without patents, wouldn't you say?
Looking at my Mac browsers, it looks like Netscape doesn't totally support PNG, and IE (4.5) doesn't support it *at all* - the W3 pages come up with all broken images.
./ - GIF isn't going away any time soon, and PNG is far from ready as a common image format, IMO. Unisys doesn't seem to be coming after anyone with any great vengence - how could they? First of all, the web is way too large - how do you take that on? Second, how is Unisys going to know if you created your graphics with an unlicensed graphics program? This whole thing is silly.
I'm a bit surprised this story made it on
Luke (sticking to GIFs and JPEGs, for the near future, anyway)
This is mostly left over from when I had a horribly slow system, and wanted to cater to people with similar setups while designing my web page, but I had maybe two graphics on the whole site. A title logo and an email button. That's it. Everything else I prettied up with colors and tables and whatnot. Made for a site that looked nice, loaded quickly, was easy to use, and anybody could look at it no matter what their setup.
In response to the article a while ago about AltaVista's new look (or rather, to a comment on that article), I started designing my own, personal "portal." Guess what? Not a single graphic on the page. It looks nice, layout is rather efficient, and the whole thing only takes up 7kb (inlcuding a 1.6kb ASP script so I can search multiple search engines from the same form). http://silverlight.org/cray/ if anybody's interested.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
They don't work in Netscape 4.7 for Mac OS either. Netscape's PNG support is very incomplete. Most other browsers have problems as well.
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I seem to remember the GIF format allows for uncompressed GIFs (from reading about the IJG support for GIF in their JPEG software). Is there any reason for these to be covered by any patents/ copyrights/ trademarks. Maybe this could prove the solution to the animated GIF/ banner ads/ transparency/ browser support type problems. I think most people could cope with the small amount of extra bandwidth these would need. On the other hand, it might be nice to get away from GIF for once and for all.
No one's forcing you or anyone to make the move. This is just something that goes along with several of the philosophies that accompany the free software movement. Some don't believe software patents should exist, or that shaking down people for $5000 isn't appropriate after being dormant for so many years on the issue.
This is just a call for those that have these sort of feelings on the issue to abandon GIFs (or other format using LZW) and switch to other formats. Likewise, if there's some images you have which just don't display properly on certain browsers or whatever, then decisions must be made. You can try various other formats, see if any match your needs. Or you can write letters to browser makers to encourage them to properly support existing standards. Proper implementation of existing standards should be important to all of us, otherwise you have no standard.
The Gimp doesn't include any code for writing GIF files. Rather, it links against the libgif API. If your copy of libgif uses LZW, you get patent encumbered GIFs, otherwise you do not.
(RedHat and other Linux distributions ship "libungif" in place of libgif, which uses the less efficient RLE compression)
As impractical as it sounds, its probably for the best, once enough people start using more PNG's you'll see better browser support and raise awareness about the evil GIF compression patent.
GIFs will probably be here until the end of time, but maybe they'll get some half-way decent competition. Its like a mini Linux vs. Windows fight. Though I have a feeling that PNG is gonna end up meaning Probably Not Gonna replace GIFs.
I seem to recall a /. discussion on this subject a few months back. Unisys is not interested in charging every little website money. What they are interested in is stopping wiley e. coder who didnt pay for LZH to use it in his dinky little graphics app. What it comes down to is this. If you used a commercial graphics package to create your .gifs (photoshop, corel, or whatnot), youre fine, use your gifs, no one is going to charge you. If you wrote a program that uses LZH to compress GIFs and didnt pay for it, then you need to watch out. The fact is, Unisys really did nothing that any other company wouldnt do, I'm actually surprised they waited this long. All theyre trying to do is stop companies from using their algorithm in products w/out paying for it. Can you blame them? They are a buisness after all, they need to make the money or they'll sink.
..does the patent expire? Most of us are happily awaiting the expiry of RSA, that should solve some Free Software headaches. Does LZW expire anytime soon? Or should we all get the contingency plans into gear and make PNGs work?
Incidently, all that has to happen is for Mozilla to do PNG's PERFECTLY and that will set a precendent for IE to do it too.
Lets all use PNG's, regardless of whether Unisys will sue us or not. The Internet is based on free standards, lets keep it up.
I don't think it's possible to create a gif without it
It is possible to create a gif without using LZW, you can use RLE (as did Version 1.3 of gd), but it will result in larger gifs.
Once the images were there, I fired up always trusty "Paint Shop Pro v 5.01" to do a Batch conversion. The file sizes seemed about the same size as the original GIF files (which is to be expected given the 1~3K file size).
Then I thought I would throw one of the PNG files back into Netscape v4.7 to see how it handled things. I draged and droped an PNG file into NS 4.7 and saw "Loading plug-in" flash in the status bar ...then the apple logo came up for a split second, then the PNG apeared.
I couldn't believe my own eyes, so I did it again just to make sure I wasn't imagining things....and sure enough, the PNG file format (win98/NS4.7) is being opened by a Apple Quicktime 4.0 plug-in!
Imagine, if you will, when a user goes to load your home page (which you diligently converted to PNG images) and starts seeing the apple logo pop up every time a little 1k PNG is loaded on the page. imagine the user watching his resource meter slowly drop as the plug-in consumes the last of his precious resources.
Has anyone else recently installed the QT 4.0 player? Can you confirm it handling the PNG format?
1. convert all gif to png 2. create an apache module that checks the browser support for png. if it does not, any request for a png will send corresponding jpeg file. If no corresponding jpeg file, convert/create one. QED. Feasible? Hasdi
} The one thing that I've always liked about
} is the animations. So, does anyone have
} suggestions about an open source animated
} format to use in place of
http://www.cdrom.com/pub/mng/
I've been obsessively collecting ad banners for
the past 3 or 4 months. Of the approximately
350 I've got so far, ImageMagick successfully
converts *all* of them to MNG. Total GIF size
is 357 megabytes while total MNG size is 338
megabytes.
For one thing, http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapbr.html lists browsers and their state of PNG support. You'll notice what's already been said about Netscape lacking transparency support, et. al., but more importantly they have a list of PNG plugins for different architectures that is worth a try.
More generally, http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapps.html lists all applications with PNG support by categories.
Every day we pick the coolest animated GIFs to add to our extensive library, and the best of the best are featured here.
GIFWorks
Enter the URL of an image:
Andover.net sure doesn't seem to have a problem with gif's. I think Rob should try to talk some since into the "leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet."
I think Andover need to walk the walk
geach
GIFs have wonderful support in pretty much every browser (save Lynx, etc) ever made. PNGs does not. The fact that PNGs are not even supported fully until the 5.0 version of a browser that has over 60% market share (IE) should deter anyone who wants their website to actually serve a purpose away. While I heartfully agree that what Unisys is doing is highway robbery, I and anyone else who makes a living designing web sites can't look their customer in the eyes and tell them that PNG is the way to go with conviction. GIFs load faster (because of better support in the browser, not compression) and are virtually bug free. PNG support, I'm sad to report, isn't.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The (or one, at least) mp3 encoding algorithm is patented by Fraunhofer Institut, and they are exercising their patent rights by demanding people to pay them license fees for mp3 encoders. The big difference here is that they've been doing this since before mp3 became popular, AFAIK. Considering this is part of the MPEG standard, it would surprise me if they haven't.
Fraunhofer did manage to shut down at least one free mp3 encoding project, 8Hz, despite the fact that there isn't even a patent in the country it was developed in (the Netherlands).
In a way they are worse than Unisys, who have permitted people to make free GIF encoders, but at least they didn't wait until it had become popular and then start demanding license fees.
The following RFC on Portable Network Graphics is from RFC2083.txt.
.. does this mean that PNG can support animation?? what does "progressive display capability" mean ??====
Features:
---------
* PNG supports truecolor images.
* "In particular, GIF is well adapted for online communications because of its streamability and progressive display capability. PNG shares those attributes. (Stress added).
====Can some one tell me
* PNG has been expressly designed not to be completely dependent on a single compression technique.
*"Indexed-color,grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits."
Limitations:
------------
* There is no uncompressed variant of PNG.
* There is no standard chunk for thumbnail views of images.
* There is no lossy compression in PNG.
Hope that clarifies where PNG stands
Manifest
... "follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind