Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] The GIF issue

[M. R. Brown]

* Loic Dachary <address@hidden> on Thu, Jan 17, 2002:

> Bob Schader writes:
>  > Dan,
>  > 
>  > I looked into this gif issue tonight, and found the following statement on
>  > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html :
>  > 
>  > 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.
> 
>       The point is to boycott GIF files. This is what the GNU project
> does, in addition to finding/providing technical means to avoid the
> patent problems. 
> 

Nonsense.  GIF is a file format.  LZW is an algorithm that can be applied
to a variant of the GIF file format.  GNU doesn't make that distinction,
they probably didn't realize they could've when they got "riled" up to
boycott *all* GIFs.  I could see if the stance were "we'll boycott all
LZW-encoded GIFs, but since GIFs are widespread and useful we'll keep
uncompressed ones around".  But it isn't technical, so don't try to pass
it off as such.

This is what happens when developers blindly follow the ravings of RMS, et.
al.  Funny how GNU software itself shamelessly falls out of the lines of
the "boycott".

M. R.

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