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Re: PHP With GIF Support



Hello!

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 12:24:02AM +0200, Marvin Massih wrote:
> I have heard that there no longer is that annoying GIF patent, which
> means that open-source software can now include GIF support again.

There is only a patent on the LZW compression algorithm, you could
freely generate uncompressed GIFs all the time.

Furthermore from <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html>:
|The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it
|expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan patent expired on 20 June 2004 and
|in Canada until 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expires 11 August
|2006, (we are still searching the databases of other countries).

So it's maybe a little bit too early for any "celebrations".

Cheers,
Flo

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