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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.
http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapps.html
(as pointed out in one of the refered pages)
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.
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?
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
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.
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
Not hardly.
Notice that the animated GIFs do not come from Slashdot's servers themselves. Most sites that have banner ads do not host the images on their own server, since they subscribe to some ad service.
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?
No. We have been here before. If you mail to the address given in that page, you get an underpaid secretary (Cheryl) who has had to wade through all this filth once already.
Give her a break, no flames.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
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