VanLUG Email Archive
jerome schatten (romers@home.com)
Sat, 11 Sep 1999 08:09:13 -0700
Thought this might be of interest to the group...
jrome
========================
attached mail follows:
The event, which so far isn't scheduled for an actual date, was started
in anger over the discovery that Unisys <http://www.unisys.com> is
making a new effort to extract royalties out of US patent 4,558,302,
commonly known as the LZW compression method. Created by Terry Welch of
Sperry Corporation in 1983, LZW eventually became Unisys property when
Sperry merged with Burroughs Corporation to form Unisys in 1986. LZW is
at the heart of the GIF file format. If you make or store GIF files,
you're using patented LZW formulas -- and Unisys wants money from you.
Of course, this means that GIFs are off-limits to open source users, who
aren't used to paying for licenses. The League for Programming Freedom
(LPF), which is closely related to the GNU project (LPF was co-founded
by GNU leader Richard Stallman), is trying to fight this kind of
technology hoarding. And, as a result, you'll see no GIFs on the GNU or
LPF Web sites.
As far as the GIF-using community knew, no terms existed on using the
GIF format until 1995, when CompuServe shocked its community by
revealing its deal with Unisys and spelling out terms by which
developers would pay licensing fees.
But that agreement covered only CompuServe users. The rest of the
online community was -- and is -- still open to attack. While
maintaining that users of GIF viewers were safe, Unisys began pursuing
its patent claims against companies whose graphics software was capable
of writing GIF-format files. To let everyone know it was serious,
Unisys in 1998 went after Corel and was able to get retroactive fees in
an out-of-court settlement.
--- Fork it over ---
Unisys now says that it wants a $5,000 license from anyone running a Web
site that contains GIF files made by unlicensed creation software.
For more information on the above story, go to the following URL:
http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/linux/news/0,6423,2330029,00.html
P.N.L.
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