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Unisys Launches Massive Ripoff of the Web


This is the end of GIFs on the Web.  Time to move to a new format, and
let these sleazy bastards starve.  Unisys is cursed.  I am infuriated.
I am immediately removing GIF support from all my software, what little
it had... which *was* legal under their license terms, until now.

Eric S. Raymond wrote, in the current Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/>:
>Remember the flap back in 1994-1995 about the GIF format, with Unisys 
>behaving like jerks over the LZW compression method and threatening to 
>charge license fees for use of their bogus patent? Well, brace yourselves. 
>It just got worse. Under Unisys's new policy, they've gone beyond shaking 
>down software authors. They're now threatening to sue even noncommercial
>websites that carry GIFs for a $5000 license fee, regardless of whether 
>the GIFs were generated by licensed software or not. The gory details are 
>at Don Marti's Burn All GIFs Day site, <http://burnallgifs.org/>. Time to
>convert all your GIFs to some other format. I like PNG better than JPEG, 
>as it's lossless. The PNG site <http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/> carries a 
>gif2png tool that does a good job; I just used it to clean up my personal
>website. GIF animations won't survive the conversion, however...uh, wait. 
>Maybe Unisys just did us a favor after all... " Here is the Unisys page 
>that started it all: <http://corp2.unisys.com/LeadStory/lzw-license.html>.


--Jeremy H. Griffith     <jeremy@omsys.com>
  http://www.omsys.com/jeremy/

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