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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 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?
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.
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.
http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapps.html
(as pointed out in one of the refered pages)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
You can use some simple Javascript to use both GIFs and PNGs (or JPGs and PNGs) if you want to test for browser compatibility. Remember that a non-Javascript browser should receive the non PNG graphic for good measure. This could be a pain, but could be implemented as a script to convert entire pages (anyone?):
.enabledPlugin isn't strictly necessary -- it will simply prevent software like Netscape from attempting (or prompting) to download a plugin to support the type if not native.
<script language="JavaScript"> <!--
if (navigator.mimeTypes &&
navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"] != null && navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"].enabledPlugin)
document.write('<img src="image.png">');
else
document.write('<img src="image.gif">');
// -->
</script>
<noscript>
<img src="image.gif">
</noscript>
The
Again, a simple wrapper could probably be made for this if anyone else finds it useful.
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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
--
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.
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.
good luck burning them, unless you print them out first...
maybe it should have been delete the gifs day...
oh well
You're right, for now PNG isn't really a viable alternative, it simply isn't widely supported enough to be the one true format, but it IS good enough to replace GIFs in most situations.
It's supported (to some degree) in both NS and IE (Don't know about Opera), except not fully. There are some links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ to test how well your browser supports it.
Netscape can't do translucencies (but it can do transparencies), and I'm pretty sure IE has some issues with it (It'll load PNGs embedded into a web page but not by themselves, it's odd). But both do have some degree of PNG support. However, I don't think they have MNG support, so it'll be difficult to replace animated GIFs (they should be elimated anyways)
Besides, the point of this isn't really to permanently replace all images on all pages, it's to get a message across about patents and gifs. There is definately enough support for that (Both in software and mindshare).
I've went off on a tangent here. I only meant to reply to say that IE does semi-support PNG. So I'll shut up now.
--
Reject
--
Reject
reject@metaphorcity dot com
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.
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) :-)
First some background for people who don't know much about compression. LZ77 and LZ78 are algorithms published by the same researchers in 1977 and 1978 which exploit repeated patterns in your data to efficiently compress information. Huffman encoding is a different technique for compression which will make the common symbols in your data take up less space.
LZW is a variant of LZ78 compression. It is modified for speed of compression. (Note: compression, not decompression). LZW is what Unisys has a patent on.
Deflate is the algorithm used by gzip and is also used by PKZip. It combines LZ77 with Huffman encoding. It nearly always compresses better than LZW because besides exploiting patterns it will also make the most frequent symbols represented by a small number of bits.
Because LZW is the thing which is patented, and Deflate doesn't use LZW, .PNGs don't have patent issues like gifs, and because Huffman encoding is used they also compress better. So, technically, they are the obvious choice. The only issue is browser compatibility.
--
--
Need undo/redo for your free software app? See Libundo
Phil Karn did something similar which proved that the source code printed in the book Applied Cryptology wasn't a mutition that couldn't be exported in accordance to ITAR regulations here in the USA, while the source code typed in and saved onto the disk *IS* a mutition (and thus can't be exported). Something's wrong there.
If Unisis wants to charge fees, it better have it's laywers start on getting all the books pulled from every shelf. Not very eazy, eh?
---
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";
} that is a good question, and as far as i know, } an unanswerable one. As far as i know, gif aking
} programs do not leave a message for Unisys that
} they are liscensed
Many of the animated banners that are served by
the ad brokers contain a GIF comment that says
they were made by Gif Builder (which seems to
be no longer available from its author); others
say they were made with unlicensed or demo programs.
True. There is a certain amount of overhead
in PNG that isn't present in GIF, namely
an 8-byte signature and three required chunks.
The smallest possible PNG is 67 bytes, while
the smallest useful one (a transparent dot
that can be used for a spacer) is 68 bytes.
A file doesn't have to be very large before
this overhead is amortized, though.
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?
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