Hello list, hello Bob and Marti
---
I´m just observing the colormanagement market. Actually littleCMS has
grown up to a status, that is comparable or even better than e.g.
- Microsoft ICM
- AppleCMM
- AdobeCMM
- KodakCMM
- EFICMM
Now, commercial companies are using it for free, without giving back
something to Marti or the open-source community.
People, which are familiar with colormanagement-business, should
remember, that 10 years ago, EFI was more or less suiting every company,
which had in their software a functionality to separate RGB to CMYK,
because they are violationg the "Schreiber-Patent" which EFI is the
owner of.
Even if we all don´t like such fields of politics and patent wars,
we are now on very thin ice, because Marti is doing an incredible good
job with littleCMS.
The future of littleCMS is clearly in the hand of Marti, because it is
his project, and he wrote more or less 100% of the code. But legal
issues can also be important to projects which are using littleCMS.
One example from the past:
In the middle of the 90ties the german software-company BEST had the
idea to write CMYK-drivers for inkjet-printers and putting it together
with the commercial version of GhostScript and a CMM in a solution for
digital proofing in the graphic arts market.
At the beginning, the big players in the proofing market laughed about
this small company:
"It will never be possible to use cheap inkjet printers for high-end
proofing".
5 years later, BEST was selling worldwide the highest quantity of
digital proofing solutions.
One big issue at BEST was the question, which CMM they should licence,
that they are shure, that the owner of the CMM has strong enough patents
not to be suited by EFI or others.
So legal issues concerning littleCMM are also legal issues for projects,
which make use of littleCMS.
Somekind of foundation could "may be" a solution which is clearing such
legal issues, so that Marti can do the things he likes:
"coding"
The decision what to do with littleCMS is mainly Martis decision.
But on this list, we can share our views of the colormanagement market
and open source vs. color-patent issues.
Greetings
:-) Jan-Peter
Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Jan-Peter Homann wrote:
Even for commercial companies, which wish to sponsor littleCMS or
Marti, it is really hard to transfer money, because, there is no
infrastructure for it.
From my view, littleCMS is shortly before becoming the "apache" of
cross-plattform ICC-based colormanagement.
I hope not! The projects you mentioned are ponderous political
nightmares designed to support large infrastructures. From what I see,
Little CMS is still Marti's project and it should stay that way. It
should operate as he sees fit.
There is *plenty* of infrastructure available to send money to Marti. An
umbrella organization (which takes ownership away from the software's
original author in exchange for vauge legal protections) is not
required. The fact of the matter is that Marti has not requested
contributions from Little CMS users. Requesting contributions could be
as simple as setting up payment via Paypal and adding a "Contribute to
Little CMS" link on the web site, or using the existing contribution
mechanism offered via SourceForge.
Marti is a master of his craft and can pull in lots of income on a
consulting basis if he chooses to. Perhaps he does so already. Marti's
private finances are not our concern.
--
--
homann colormanagement ------ fon/fax +49 30 611 075 18
Jan-Peter Homann ------------- mobile +49 171 54 70 358
Kastanienallee 71 ------- http://www.colormanagement.de
10435 Berlin --------- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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