On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Sam Ewalt wrote:
> If I remember correctly the gif format was developed and owned by
> Compuserve. They encouraged people to use it in various ways and it
> became a standard format. They retained copyright to it. Sometime after
> Compuserve was sold to AOL the new owners decided to remind people that
> gif was still copyrighted and that they owned it.
Copyright is substantially different than patent.
It's the LZW algorithm that is patented, and used for data
compression in the gif format.
> I hear howls of complaint concerning the idea that gif's are
> proprietary, but it hasn't seemed to affect their almost universal
> use on web sites.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "universal."
There are still several open-source sites using gifs, true, but
then there are also many who have completely eschewed gifs, or
are replacing them as they get around to it.
Some I can think of off-hand that use png:
1) http://gphoto.org/
2) http://sourceforge.net/
3) http://linuxtoday.com/
Unfortunately, advertisers like motion. As long as sites are
displaying ads, they'll be displaying gifs (until something
better comes along, anyway).
- Steve
