We've been hearing about PNG for damn near 3 years now, and even in 4.x browsers it still isn't fully implemented. The simple fact of the matter is that $$$ talks. Since about 60% of my web viewers are using 4.x browsers, I could probably get away with using PNG on my site in place of gif's... but (and you knew there'd be one of these). Everyone on 3.x and older browsers would be SOL. But wait, whats that? you can get a plugin? Ahh.. but if you use a plugin, you have to use the INBED tag in the html, which means that newer browsers wouldn't be able to see them unless they too had the plugin, thus negating the need for anyone to upgrade their browsers. (kind of a circular argument, I know but...)
It's the same reason that I keep my site looking good for people that are using AOL... Money talks and they provide more than 70% of the traffic to my web site.
I can understand some animosity from the open source community about this, as I personally think patenting a piece of software is pretty bogus. (Isnt intellectual property generally copyrighted?)
All my software is major label stuff, so I'm not going to worry about royalty fees or liscense fees until, and unless someone from Unisys comes knocking on my door. -Twitch
Isn't this a bit out dated? I mean, c'mon the stuff on Unisys' pages is between four and five years old here. (near as I can tell from using their search engine anyway, it's all from '94/'95)
The stuff on LPF isn't much better as it points to, you guessed it, the original Unisys articls... yet they mysteriously give it a date of aug 99. Hrrm... As near as I can tell, the article posted at http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.html was linked originally from a press release dating back to January of 1995. I think that we'd have heard by now if Unisys was REALLY going to do something about this or not...
And Burnallgifs.org doens't seem to link to anything other than the original, by now moldy press release/liscense information page and other articles that have actually linked to him.
The article from LPF that points to Barnstormer-Software.com is almost a year old. (And it's the most recent thing I've found that actually has some input from Unisys in it.)
So, even while it appears that Mr. Osborne has had a run in with Unisys over this issue, I haven't heard anything that Unisys has said about this isse less than 10 months old. Does ANYONE have ANYTHING new to add to this???
A case of the tale wagging the dog? Did someone find this old press release and suddently think the sky is falling?
Slashdot Mirror
We've been hearing about PNG for damn near 3 years now, and even in 4.x browsers it still isn't fully implemented. The simple fact of the matter is that $$$ talks. Since about 60% of my web viewers are using 4.x browsers, I could probably get away with using PNG on my site in place of gif's... but (and you knew there'd be one of these). Everyone on 3.x and older browsers would be SOL. But wait, whats that? you can get a plugin? Ahh.. but if you use a plugin, you have to use the INBED tag in the html, which means that newer browsers wouldn't be able to see them unless they too had the plugin, thus negating the need for anyone to upgrade their browsers. (kind of a circular argument, I know but...)
It's the same reason that I keep my site looking good for people that are using AOL... Money talks and they provide more than 70% of the traffic to my web site.
I can understand some animosity from the open source community about this, as I personally think patenting a piece of software is pretty bogus. (Isnt intellectual property generally copyrighted?)
All my software is major label stuff, so I'm not going to worry about royalty fees or liscense fees until, and unless someone from Unisys comes knocking on my door.
-Twitch
Isn't this a bit out dated? I mean, c'mon the stuff on Unisys' pages is between four and five years old here. (near as I can tell from using their search engine anyway, it's all from '94/'95)
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The stuff on LPF isn't much better as it points to, you guessed it, the original Unisys articls... yet they mysteriously give it a date of aug 99. Hrrm... As near as I can tell, the article posted at http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.htm
was linked originally from a press release dating back to January of 1995. I think that we'd have heard by now if Unisys was REALLY going to do something about this or not...
And Burnallgifs.org doens't seem to link to anything other than the original, by now moldy press release/liscense information page and other articles that have actually linked to him.
The article from LPF that points to Barnstormer-Software.com is almost a year old. (And it's the most recent thing I've found that actually has some input from Unisys in it.)
So, even while it appears that Mr. Osborne has had a run in with Unisys over this issue, I haven't heard anything that Unisys has said about this isse less than 10 months old. Does ANYONE have ANYTHING new to add to this???
A case of the tale wagging the dog? Did someone find this old press release and suddently think the sky is falling?