I have to agree with Twitch. Let's be sensible about the money considerations here: 1) I hate AOLers and WebTVers... but they constitute a fair amount of my traffic. They also constitute the majority of my user support costs and technical problems. But just because I hate my customers doesn't mean I don't want their money. You can't afford to be snobby on the internet... not anymore. (I miss the days of the pre-spam USENET, too, but let's move on.) 2) If UNISYS goes after anyone, it will be the people who they think can pay: MS, eBay, Amazon and any other big names. And last I looked, AOL uses gifs on their network. 3) UNISYS pisses enough folks off with actual legal bullying... and they'll end up in court. There, a kindly old judge will see the XEROX precedent and proceed to declare UNISYS' patent Public Domain.
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I have to agree with Twitch. Let's be sensible about the money considerations here:
1) I hate AOLers and WebTVers... but they constitute a fair amount of my traffic. They also constitute the majority of my user support costs and technical problems. But just because I hate my customers doesn't mean I don't want their money. You can't afford to be snobby on the internet... not anymore. (I miss the days of the pre-spam USENET, too, but let's move on.)
2) If UNISYS goes after anyone, it will be the people who they think can pay: MS, eBay, Amazon and any other big names. And last I looked, AOL uses gifs on their network.
3) UNISYS pisses enough folks off with actual legal bullying... and they'll end up in court. There, a kindly old judge will see the XEROX precedent and proceed to declare UNISYS' patent Public Domain.