Re: RTF - proprietary or open?

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> They why was there a big flap when Unisys restricted use of GIF?

Unisys held a patent covering LZW compression.  Unisys did not create
the GIF format.  The GIF format was created by CompuServe.  Neither
did Unisys write the 'compress' program.  But both implemented an
algorithm considered to be an implementation of lzw compression and
therefore both were blocked by the Unisys patent until it expired.
Neither GIF nor compress authors were aware of the patent when they
created their implementations.

AFAICT the last lzw patent has expired.  At this time there is no
restriction on using either gif or compress however IANAL.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compress
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF

Bob