On Sun, Jun 06, 1999 at 12:01:45AM +0100, Matt Kern wrote: > I am not at all impressed by us having gifs on the website. I really > don't care whether they look slightly sharper than JPEGs -- we can always > up the JPEG detail level a bit. I *do* care about us using proprietary > code to make them. We may distribute non-free software, but as we are > keen to point out, it is not part of the main distro. Keep in mind that neither GIFs nor TIFFs per se have any problems. It is the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm, which is an optional part of the image file formats, that is the problem. If push comes to shove, you can always use uncompressed GIFs or TIFFs. It's probably not a very responsible use of net bandwidth, I admit; nevertheless the point remains that only the act of compressing a GIF or TIFF runs afoul of the Unisys patent. There is, however, the additional issue of Compuserve and their claim on the "GIF" identifier -- however I don't know what the terms on this are, and in how many parts of the world it has force. It may simply be that the GIF and TIFF file formats, even when compressed, are more an issue of "non-us" than "non-free". -- G. Branden Robinson | Religion is something left over from the Debian GNU/Linux | infancy of our intelligence; it will branden@ecn.purdue.edu | fade away as we adopt reason and science cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ | as our guidelines. -- Bertrand Russell
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