[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
www/philosophy gif.html
From: |
John Sullivan |
Subject: |
www/philosophy gif.html |
Date: |
Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:10:31 +0000 |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: John Sullivan <johnsu01> 06/08/15 00:10:31
Modified files:
philosophy : gif.html
Log message:
Undo my last commit catastrophe.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/gif.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.30&r2=1.31
Patches:
Index: gif.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/gif.html,v
retrieving revision 1.30
retrieving revision 1.31
diff -u -b -r1.30 -r1.31
--- gif.html 8 Aug 2006 22:29:01 -0000 1.30
+++ gif.html 15 Aug 2006 00:10:28 -0000 1.31
@@ -333,342 +333,7 @@
<p>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
- $Date: 2006/08/08 22:29:01 $ $Author: johnsu01 $
- <!-- timestamp end -->
- </p>
- </div>
-=======
- <head>
- <title>Why There Are No GIF files on GNU Web Pages</title>
- <meta http-equiv="content-type" content='text/html; charset=utf-8' />
- <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/gnu.css" />
- <link rev="made" href="mailto:address@hidden" />
- </head>
-
- <!-- This document is in XML, and xhtml 1.0 -->
- <!-- Please make sure to properly nest your tags -->
- <!-- and ensure that your final document validates -->
- <!-- consistent with W3C xhtml 1.0 and CSS standards -->
- <!-- See validator.w3.org -->
-
- <body>
- <p>
- <a href="#translations">Translations</a> of this page
- </p>
- <h3>Why There Are No GIF files on GNU Web Pages</h3>
- <p>
- <a href="/graphics/philosophicalgnu.html"><img
src="/graphics/philosophical-gnu-sm.jpg" alt=" [image of a Philosophical Gnu] "
/></a>
- </p>
- <hr />
-
- <p>
- There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the patents (Unisys
- and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm which is used in
- making GIF files. These patents make it impossible to have free
- software to generate proper GIFs. They also apply to the
- <strong>compress</strong> program, which is why GNU does not use
- it or its format.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Unisys and IBM both applied for patents in 1983. Unisys (and
- perhaps IBM) applied for these patents in a number of countries.
- Of the places whose patent databases we were able to search, the
- latest expiration date seems to be 1 October 2006
- <a name="returnnote" href="#venuenote"><sup>1</sup></a>. Until then,
- anyone who releases a free program for making GIF files is likely
- to be sued. We don't know any reason to think that the patent
- owners would lose these lawsuits.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser
- (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF.
- They could instead sue the users of the program, including the
- companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be
- responsible behavior for us to set up this situation.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Many people think that Unisys has given permission for distributing
- free software to make GIF format. Unfortunately that is not what
- Unisys has actually done. Here is what Unisys actually said about
- the matter in 1995:
- </p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- <strong>Unisys does not require licensing, or fees to be paid,
- for non-commercial, non-profit GIF-based applications, including
- those for use on the on-line services. Concerning developers of
- software for the Internet network, the same principle applies.
- Unisys will not pursue previous inadvertent infringement by developers
- producing versions of software products for the Internet prior to
- 1995. The company does not require licensing, or fees to be paid
- for non-commercial, non-profit offerings on the Internet, including
- "Freeware".</strong>
- </p>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>
- Unfortunately, this doesn't permit
- <a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">free software</a>, only
- <a href="/philosophy/categories.html#semi-freeSoftware">semi-free
- software</a> which cannot be used in a free operating system such
- as GNU. It also does not permit <em>at all</em> the use of LZW
- for other purposes such as compression of files. This is why we
- think it is still best to reject LZW, and switch to alternatives
- such as <a href="/software/gzip/gzip.html">GNU zip</a> and PNG format.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <a href="/philosophy/selling.html">Commercial redistribution of
- free software</a> is very important, and we want the GNU system as
- a whole to be redistributed commercially. This means we can't add
- a GIF-generating program to GNU, not under the Unisys terms.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The <a href="/fsf/fsf.html">Free Software Foundation</a> is a
- non-commercial, non-profit organization, so strictly speaking the
- income from our sales of <a href="http://order.fsf.org/">CD-ROMs</a>
- is not "profit". Perhaps this means we could include a GIF
- program on our CD-ROM and claim to be acting within the scope of
- the Unisys permission--or perhaps not. But since we know that
- other redistributors of GNU would be unable to include it, doing
- this would not be very useful.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Shortly after Unisys made its announcement, when the net in general
- was reassured thinking that Unisys had given permission for free
- GIF-generating software, we wrote to the Unisys legal department
- asking for clarification of these issues. We did not receive a
- response.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Even if Unisys really did give permission for free software to
- generate GIFs, we would still have to deal with the IBM patent.
- Both the IBM and the Unisys patents cover the same "invention"--the
- LZW compression algorithm. (This could reflect an error on the
- part of the US Patent and Trademark Office, which is famous for
- incompetence and poor judgment.)
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Decoding GIFs is a different issue. The Unisys and IBM patents
- are both written in such a way that they do not apply to a program
- which can only uncompress LZW format and cannot compress. Therefore
- we can and will include support for displaying GIF files in GNU
- software.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Given this situation, we could still include GIF files in our web
- pages if we wanted to. Many other people would be happy to generate
- them for us, and we would not be sued for having GIF files on our
- server.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- But we feel that if we can't distribute the software to enable
- people to generate GIF files properly, then we should not have
- other people run such software for us. Besides, if we can't provide
- software in GNU to generate GIF files, we have to recommend an
- alternative. We ourselves should use the alternative that we
- recommend.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- In 1999, Unisys had the following to say about the issue of their
- patent:
- </p>
-
- <blockquote>
- <p>
- <strong>Unisys has frequently been asked whether a Unisys license
- is required in order to use LZW software obtained by downloading
- from the Internet or from other sources. The answer is simple. In
- all cases, a written license agreement or statement signed by an
- authorized Unisys representative is required from Unisys for all
- use, sale or distribution of any software (including so-called
- "freeware") and/or hardware providing LZW conversion capability
- (for example, downloaded software). </strong>
- </p>
- </blockquote>
-
- <p>
- With this statement, Unisys is trying to take back what they said
- in 1995 when they gave parts of the patent to the public. The
- legality of such a move is questionable.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- A further issue is that the LZW patents--and software patents in
- general--are an offense against the freedom of programmers generally,
- and all programmers need to work together against software patents.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- So even if we could find a solution to enable the free software
- community to generate GIFs, that isn't really a solution, not for
- the problem as a whole. The solution is switching to another format
- and not using GIF any more.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Therefore, we don't use GIF, and we hope you won't use it either.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- It is possible to make non-compressed images that act like GIFs,
- in that they work with programs that decode GIF format. This can
- be done without infringing patents. These pseudo-GIFs are useful
- for some purposes.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- It is also possible to create GIFs using a patent-free run length
- encoding but this doesn't achieve the compression that one normally
- expects in a GIF.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- We decided not to use these pseudo-GIFs on our web site because
- they are not a satisfactory solution to the community's problem.
- They work, but they are very large. What the web needs is a
- patent-free compressed format, not large pseudo-GIFs.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <a href="http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/index.html">PNG format</a>
- is a patent-free compressed format. We hope it will become widely
- supported; then we will use it. We do have
- <a href="/graphics/graphics.html">PNG versions</a> of the images
- on this server.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- For more information about the GIF patent problems, see
- <a href="http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/Gif/Gif.html">the League
- for Programming Freedom GIF page</a>. Through that page you can
- find more information about the problem of software patents in
- general.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <a href="http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html">The browser
- support page</a> lists browsers which are compatible with the PNG
- format and comments on how well they support it.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- There's a library called
-
-
- <a href="http://ca.geocities.com/libungif/">
- libungif</a> that reads gif files and writes uncompressed gifs to
- circumvent the Unisys patent.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- <a href="http://burnallgifs.org">http://burnallgifs.org</a> is a
- website devoted to discouraging the use of GIF files on your website.
- </p>
-
- <hr />
- <p> Footnote:
- <br />
- <a href="#returnnote" id="venuenote">1.</a> We were able to search the
- patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The
- Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it
- expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan the patent expired on 20 June
- 2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM
- patent expires 11 August 2006, The Software Freedom Law Center says that
- after 1 October 2006, there will be no significant patent claims
- interfering with employment of the GIF format.</p>
- <hr />
-
- <h4><a href="/philosophy/philosophy.html">Other Texts to Read</a></h4>
-
- <!-- All pages on the GNU web server should have the section about -->
- <!-- verbatim copying. Please do NOT remove this without talking -->
- <!-- with the webmasters first. -->
- <!-- Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the document
-->
- <!-- and that it is like this "2001, 2002" not this "2001-2002." -->
-
- <p style="font-size: 10pt;">
- <a id="translations"></a>
- <b>Translations of this page</b>:<br />
-
- <!-- Please keep this list alphabetical, and in the original -->
- <!-- language if possible, otherwise default to English -->
- <!-- If you do not have it English, please comment what the -->
- <!-- English is. If you add a new language here, please -->
- <!-- advise address@hidden and add it to -->
- <!-- - in /home/www/bin/nightly-vars either TAGSLANG or WEBLANG -->
- <!-- - in /home/www/html/server/standards/README.translations.html -->
- <!-- one of the lists under the section "Translations Underway" -->
- <!-- - if there is a translation team, you also have to add an alias
-->
- <!-- to mail.gnu.org:/com/mailer/aliases -->
- <!-- Please also check you have the 2 letter language code right versus
-->
- <!-- http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm -->
-
- [
- <a href="/philosophy/gif.ca.html">Català</a> <!-- Catalan -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.html">English</a>
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.de.html">Deutsch</a> <!-- German -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.es.html">Español</a> <!-- Spanish -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.fr.html">Français</a> <!-- French -->
-
- <!-- Japanese -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.ja.html">日本語</a>
-
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.ko.html">한국어</a><!--
Korean -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.pl.html">Polski</a> <!-- Polish -->
- | <a href="/philosophy/gif.ro.html">Română</a> <!--
Romanian -->
-
- <!-- Russian/Russkij -->
- | <a
href="/philosophy/gif.ru.html">Русский</a>
- | <a
href="/philosophy/gif.sr.html">Српски</a>
<!-- Serbian -->
- ]
- </p>
- <div class="copyright">
- <p>
- Return to the <a href="/home.html">GNU Project home page</a>.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Please send FSF & GNU inquiries to
- <a href="mailto:address@hidden"><em>address@hidden</em></a>.
- There are also <a href="/home.html#ContactInfo">other ways to
contact</a>
- the FSF.
- <br />
- Please send broken links and other corrections (or suggestions) to
- <a href="mailto:address@hidden"><em>address@hidden</em></a>.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Please see the
- <a href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
- README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting
- translations of this article.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
- 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA
- <br />
- Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
- permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is
- preserved.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- Updated:
- <!-- timestamp start -->
- $Date: 2006/08/08 22:29:01 $ $Author: johnsu01 $
+ $Date: 2006/08/15 00:10:28 $ $Author: johnsu01 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>