GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM

Twenty years ago, Terry Welch's improvement on Lempel-Ziv compression appeared in IEEE Computer magazine. The authors of unix 'compress' and the GIF standard incorporated that algorithm without realizing it was patent-pending. When the submarine patent surfaced ten years later, its new owner Unisys intimidated developers and web authors into moving away from GIFs, inspiring the creation of a better standard, though sadly still a less popular one. Today, July 7, 2004, Unisys's last LZW patent (in Canada) expires, leaving GIF once again free... almost. See, there's the small matter of IBM's patent, granted on the same algorithm, which is valid for another two years. That still has a chilling effect on GIF development, though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring. So how about it, IBM? You've got nothing to lose! Want to make a lot of geeks happy and release that final patent into the public domain?

Re:Why do we need GIF anymore?

[AuraBorealis]

Yes, because what we really need is alpha-transparent flashing adverts!

Obligatory Troy ref.

[WormholeFiend]

Beware of Geeks bearing GIF's

Re:If the poster is correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Animated gifs are the one thing holding you back? Can't live without that animated mailbox flashing on your website? Or perhaps it is the dancing hamsters that keeps attached.

Is there a legitimate practical use for animated gifs that I am missing?

My only question...

[lacrymology.com]

All I want to know is how will this effect my collection of mid-90s era pr0n?

-m

Re:not even close!

[HungSquirrel]

Cha-ching! I'd use PNG, but if the browser with 95%+ market dominance doesn't support its most useful feature...

Re:PNG

[RAMMS+EIN]

I feel your pain.

Too bad all the exploits I wrote have failed to convince people to switch to functional web browsers and rid the world of MSIE once and for all.

Or maybe I shouldn't have said that.

what do you mean by 'better standard'?

[OrangeTide]

If PNG is so great why doesn't it support animation? And don't say MNG, because not even my fancy open source web browser supports [libmng.com] them yet. JNG doesn't seem to be supported [libmng.com] by my fancy browser either.

Re:oh well....

[Throtex]

You do realize we were talking about a file format for displaying images, right? You sound like you're willing to lay your life down for the cause of alpha transparency!

Re:in any case

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard compliant xhtml, css, png. Clearly you're not a full time web developer. If you were, you'd have done it all in ugly flash!

Re:Png: A Flash Killer?

[Ctrl-Z]

Forget Lynx; use Telnet instead. If the content is not readable it's probably not worth it anyway.

Re:If the poster is correct

[Anonymous Coward]

The letter "G", when used in a pronounceable abbreviation (as opposed to an abbreviation which is read letter-by-letter, such as HTML) is, by convention, pronounced the same way as it would be pronounced in the word for which it stands.

So how do you pronounce the G in GNU?

Re:If the poster is correct

[Speare]

You're a git.

So, as the "G" in "GIF" is short for "Graphics", it's pronounced like the "G" in "Graphics" -- giving "guif".

Do you pronounce the Computer Emergency Response Team as "Kert"?

Or the Center (for) Observations, Modeling (and) Prediction At Scripps as "Som-pass"?

How about the Graphic Environment Operating System we all know as "Guh-Eeyos"?

Or maybe the REmote Graphics Instruction Set is "Re-guiss"?

Is your senator a fan of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or "Jatt"?

Re:oh well....

[valmont]

eh ... dude ... when was the last time u got laid?

sue anyone that uses GIF

[CAIMLAS]

IBM should sue anyone that uses GIF, simply on principle of it being an old, tired format. What's the benefit of GIF? Only thing I can think of is low-color strobing ads. Yeah, great benefit.

Instead of do anything with the patent, IBM should make note of the patent, and then tell people that PNG is better... or something like that.