[Phpgroupware-developers] gifs on GNU machines

[Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r)]

Loic Dachary wrote:
>         As a side note I remind you that no gif file are allowed on GNU.
> machines. This makes the gif conversions more pressing than it was before.

This is no mere side note. We use gifs in phpGW still. Of course I wrote
code to make png the priority when looking for the image files, but gifs
are still the most used image format in phpGroupWare.
Right now the problems with png support are completely out of our
control and we need reliable transparent image support for our images so
I am not going to force the developers of our project to port all the
images to png.

Basicly right now including gifs in our app is perfectly legal. Reading
and displaying gifs is totally free so even a GPL'd browser can display
them.
The only catch is that creating gifs has patent issues (which will
expire not too long from now if I remember correctly).
Since phpGroupWare does not generate images on the fly we have no patent
issue there.
Since our image loading functions also dont depend on gif, but actually
make gif the last try before giving up (first png, then jpg then gif) we
dont make developers use gifs in phpGroupWare.
Gifs in phpGW are only due to choice and because of the png transparency
support issue almost all of the images have been gifs, and Im not going
to force a change to that.
I have talked with Bradly Kuhn about this and he understands but
encourages me to promote png and I do, but I have made it clear that I
wont dictate a no gifs policy.

I hope you understand my position and are able to make an exception to
your rule so that phpGW can stay on Savannah.

Seek3r