> > i didnt know patents can expire.. and it would be logical to assume
there
> is
> > some way to extend the ownership/validation - like domains etc
>
> Yes, they do. Once it expires, it becomes "public domain", of sorts.
IANAL,
> but I do know that this is a big intellectual property issue here in the
US.
> Once that patent expiration comes around, GD should be free to enable the
> writing of GIF formatted files. It is the quivalent of a pharmaceutical
> ("drug") becoming available for competing companies to make generic
versions
> of it.hmm, why not write an uncompressed-gif saver -- this would circumvent the patent since its on the acctual lzw compression, and seeing that there is none you wouldnt be in any kind of breach of the patent.. after the patent expires the lzw compression just gets included back i know there are size drawbacks here in the gif's generated, and probablly some code drawbacks since no gd version supported saving of uncompressed gif files, meaning someone would have to code that, the side effect would be the obvious, people would try to switch to png since it's lossless and gives out smaller files -- but the GIF support would be fully functional as far as saving goes this would be a good idea for 4.3 (i understand the bundled lib will be included with 4.3 already, right?), i dont see a reason in adding extra defines for read_only etc, if you can circumvent the patent just by not using lzw (until the patent expires, which should be by the time 5.0 comes out - hopefully) -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
