Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] The GIF issue

[Bob Schader]

Bravo! I concur.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r)" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>; <address@hidden>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] The GIF issue


> Loic Dachary wrote:
> > 
> >         I wonder if there was a vote of phpGroupWare leaders to become
> > part of the GNU project ? If that was the case, what you suggest is that
> > noone in phpGroupWare was aware of what it means to become part of the GNU
> > project ? Or that they were fooled on purpose and that the GNU project
> > waited to be in a position to *impose* the rules that, all of a sudden,
> > were revealed ?
> 
> We did consider what it meant to be part of GNU and what GNU stood for.
> We did vote on the matter, and discussed in in length.
> I think the issue Mark was talking about was the gif issue. Other than
> the GIF issue we have worked hard to comply with the ideals of the FSF
> and GNU.
> 
> >         I must admit that I'm a bit lost. I'd rather shut up and let
> > you decide. For the record, when I decided to submit my software to
> > the GNU project I did some extensive research of what it means, what
> > it implies. I discussed the various issues, I was fully aware (hard
> > not to be) that it implies ethical & moral issues, that GNU boycotts
> > GIFs, that GNU works hard to build software 100% based on Free
> > Software avoiding dependencies to proprietary software etc. All these
> > informations are publicly avaiable and were relayed by the press many
> > times. I thought carefully if that matched my own beliefs and then
> > decided to join.  Afterwards I spent (and still do) my energy to
> > support and enforce the GNU policy, helping it evolve when needs be.
> 
> I also thought long and hard about joining GNU and I can tell from the
> discussions the team had, that many of them did as well.
> But from the way things read on the gif issue from both the gif page on
> GNU.org and in a brief discussion with Bradley I was not lead to believe
> that we could not even include GIF files in our cvs tree and releases.
> 
> I knew that we couldnt have gifs as a required part of our program, so I
> spent some time writing a set of image functions that make phpGW able to
> use PNG files instead of gifs by tweaking the generated HTML files. All
> that needed to be done was to put in a few minuted to create png copies
> of all the gif files. Then if someone deleted all the gifs by doing a
> simple find and rm, phpgroupware shouldnt flinch, but start serving up
> the PNG files right away.
> 
> This was some of the text I saw about the gif file issue:
> 
> "For example, the GIF file format is covered by the LZW software patent
> in the USA. For this reason, you should not include GIFs in the web
> pages for your package, nor in the distribution of the package itself. A
> GNU package might provide support for GIFs; however, precedence should
> always be given to PNGs, JPGs, and other patent-unencumbered image
> formats. (More about the GNU project's opposition to GIFs is available
> at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html.)"
> 
> It uses the words "you should not inlcude GIF's in..." it does *not* say
> "you cannot" or "you shall not". It says "should not", which implies an
> option. It also says that "a package might provide support for GIFs;
> however, precendence should always be given to PNG...". Since I wrote
> the functions to look for PNG, then JPG and finally GIF, I felt I was
> fulfilling this as well.
> 
> I also know that we are not infringing on the gif patent in any way,
> because we are only using and distributing gifs. The patent only
> requires that software that creates gifs must have a license to the
> patent. Since our images have either been found on other websites or
> created by someone on the team that didnt mind creating GIF's. phpGW
> does not itself create any image files.
> 
> I have spent time and energy on GNU issues and believe in what they are
> doing. I think that software patents are very bad and that they should
> be fought. I think that the patent on GIF files was a bad thing, but
> since the patent ends in 2 years and the patent holders (from my
> knowledge) havent been too much of a pain, I dont think its worth that
> much attention. It is also not something I am willing to hurt
> phpGroupWare for. I think that the FSF is taking this too extreme if
> they wont allow us to simply include GIF's in our project and after much
> debate with the leadership team we have decided not to follow this
> request. If that means that we cannot be a GNU Project, then we are
> willing to deal with that, but I rather hope that the FSF will re-think
> their view on the simple act of inlcuing GIFs (not requiring, just
> inlcuding) in our project instead of having to ask us to leave the GNU
> Project entirely.
> 
> Dan Kuykendall
> 
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