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Are You Ready For Burn All GIFs Day?
Posted by
Hemos
on Sun Oct 31, 1999 12:39 PM
from the burning-down-the-house dept.
from the burning-down-the-house dept.
ESR writes "Are you ready for Burn All
GIFs Day?. On November 5, webmasters all over the world will
convert their sites to eliminate all GIFs. Please join this
effort and show Unisys that the net will not tolerate its sleazy
attempt at a $5000-per-site shakedown based on the LZW patent.
For tools to make converting your entire site easy, see the
gif2png home
page. "
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Are You Ready For Burn All GIFs Day?
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Re:Docbook still using gif ? (Score:3)
Two suggestions (Score:5)
I have two comments to make about this.
Number one, I think this excessive worry about whether PNG support in existing browsers is sufficient, is another instance of this sin of ``worrying about appearance more than about content'' pointed out by ESR [tuxedo.org] in his HTML Hell Page [tuxedo.org]. The whole idea of having transparency in images seems dubious at best.
Even if you insist on having transparent images, please don't let the fact that PNG browser support is not perfect prevent you from using them anyway. If you do, it never will be perfect (spell ``vicious cycle''). This (refusing PNG's because browsers don't fully support them) is a form of bugware: don't indulge in bugware. Just like you should write correct HTML even though buggy HTML might look better on some (or even on all) browsers. (One canonical example of this is — which I insist on using even though Netscape — under Linux at least — bugs on it.)
Secondly, I have a proposal for action, to show how ridiculous this whole patent issue is. Create a small image that reads something like ``PATENTS SUCK''. Draw it on a piece of paper. Get a copy of the GIF standard, and do the LZW compression by hand. This is not nearly as hard as Huffman, it should be doable if the image is small enough. Then distribute the image as widely as possible. Even better: sell it, so you can claim you made a commercial use of it.
Suddenly your brain is worth $5000. Impressive isn't it?
This is old news, and blown out of props... (Score:5)
b) This issue is terribly old, nearly ancient, and *HAS* been addressed by Unisys. I'm no friend of patent whores, but to be fair to Unisys, the Gif2Pingers are blowing this way out of proportions.
c) PNG would have replaced GIFs a long time ago, if the PNG advocates would realize that there are platforms out there than PCs - and that certain browsers do NOT support PNG, and that PNG support in some browsers is spotty at best.
d) The same goes for pulling the head out of the ass, and providing bowers plugins for both main browsers, for all three main platforms, Mac, PC and Unix.
I'd have switched a long time ago, if platform support were there - so far, pNG is a nice technology, but nothing much beyond that, if it means cutting out a majority of my browser users.
Harry
Re:Will this work out as hoped ? (Score:5)
One more time:
perl -pi -e 's:ANIMEXTS1:ANIMEXTZ1:'
perl -pi -e 's:NETSCAPE2:NOTSCAPE2:'
Run that AFTER you Fortify to 128 bit (you DO Fortify those weak 56 bit browsers, right?) and then Netscape will show it ONCE and then stop.
Re: Gifs are good tho (Score:4)
I have experienced this problem with some program (can't remember which) too, but I have never experienced that with gif2png or pnmtopng.
So I don't know what you are doing wrong, but switching to gif2png or pnmtopng is probably a pretty good fix - and gif2png can handle a whole directory at a time.
Back to the topic of GIF burning:
Most people have probably made their GIF files with a licensed program (or have had them made in a non-software-patent country), so there are probably not many people, if any, this whole LZW licensing story will touch.
We should, despite this, fight software patenting in general (those of us who believe it is wrong). But I can't see there is any point in wacking Unisys all the time. It looks more like witch-hunting than sensible action. What about MIT, Microsoft, IBM, and all the other companies who also hold software patents?
I have decided to keep my old GIF files around together with the PNG versions of the images. Using content negotiation and the MultiViews setting in Apache, I leave the actual choice of PNG or GIF to my visitors.
Jacob (who lives in a software patent free country :)
Some more info... (Score:3)
One of these additions suggests that the Unisys patent is not enforceable in Australia (among a few other major countries). I encourage people to read the article linked, and (even though it was posted back in August) feel free to add further information likely to be considered relevant.
Please note that evolt.org is a resource largely for Web designers, so even though there are many OSS-related postings, a lot of the content is aimed at those who produce their images on Windows/MacOS machines. As such, the original article is more of a "if you are using Photoshop, then calm down - you're OK!" type thing, than applicable to those using free image-manipulating software.
Re:Does xv work on PNGs? (Score:4)
There's been a PNG patch for Xv available since
1995. Xv itself hasn't been upgraded because
in order to keep GIF support without paying
the tax it has to have been released before
January 1, 1995, according to the original
UNISYS manifesto. But since the grandfather
clause seems to be gone now, Xv's only choices
seem to be to eliminate GIF support or to pay up.
Re:We aren't ready for this (Score:3)
Re:Is the browser support there yet? (Score:5)
http://graphicswiz.com/png/pngapps.html
(as pointed out in one of the refered pages)
Does anyone else find this a bit ironic? (Score:3)
Will this work out as hoped ? (Score:4)
For one, as far as I've been able to tell, Unisys hasn't made any real attempts to ENFORCE this since making that initial announcement (I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong).
The second issue is that PNG support in web browsers isn't perfect, and from what I've seen, animated PNG support is nonexistant... is it really feasible to do this now ? Imagine the logical extreme... java/javascript ad banners... AAARRARARRRGH !!!!!
Again, I completely agree with this initiative, and long-since scrapped all my GIF usage a long time ago, and I've been lobbying my school (Georgia Tech) to do the same in all class curricula and on their web page. But, I just don't think that there's a workable alternative for ALL usage of GIFs right now.
Aren't there compatibility problems? (Score:4)
Besides, didn't the people say they werent going to press charges anyways?
Re:Some info & limitation on/of PNG (Score:3)
} communications because of its streamability and
} progressive display capability. PNG shares those
} attributes. (Stress added).
} ====Can some one tell me
} PNG can support animation?? what does
} "progressive display capability" mean ??====
It refers to the ability to display a low-resolution
version of the image followed by increasing amounts
of detail. Not animation. For animations, see MNG.
Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:5)
I think it makes sense for us all to switch to PNG now, because if we don't switch, good PNG support will never become de rigeur for web browsers.
We have to force the issue.
Since PNG is also technically superior (it compresses better), good support in browsers will mean that nobody uses GIFs any longer. And people will notice when a format goes out of use due to software patent problems.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Re:PNGs have better compression (Score:5)
Not really, if you have the same palette the PNG will be smaller than the GIF nearly every time. The only time when the GIF will be smaller is when you're eithor A: Working with 2 pixel images where one pixel is white and the other is black or B: You've images happen to be one of the specific patterns of bits which LZW is optimal at compressing.
This means that, for all real life intents and purpoises, the use of PNG/JPEG will *always* be smaller than GIF.
Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:3)
You mean only when it entrenched as a de facto BBS standard. Unisys has been trying to enforce it patents since the late 80s, long before the WWW days.
Most BBS standards died along with the medium -- GIF unfortunately survived. Blame Mosaic and Netcape for foisting a dubious standard on to the World Wid Web at it's inception. There was an opportunity there to introduce a new image format, and it was balked.
--
Re:Ultra-small GIFs are larger as PNG! (Score:3)
~k.lee
Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:3)
B) Patents (and copyright) have everything to do with a free market. You can't have a free market in information-based things without an artificial monopoly, because the marginal cost is zero. Free markets only work when the goods in the market have certain properties, and software does not have those properties. If you want to use a free market to determine how software production resources should be allocated, rather than, say, having the government decide it by funding software development with a tax on something, you've got to artificially give software the properties that real property has.
Zero support on the mac platform under IE... (Score:3)
Re:We aren't ready for this (Score:3)
Wrong, PNG has support for paletted images with 2, 4 and 8 bits per pixel. Moreover, the compression method is the only thing that will determine the resulting file size. That's why PNG beats GIF all the time, it has a better method including clever filtering as a pre-compression step.
JPEG is obviously not practical to replace GIF, the images are larger and lack the indexed color of GIFs as well.
JPEG's are for continuous-tone images (== photos), GIF's are aimed at pictures with large areas of the some colors and relatively few colors, e.g. cartoons. That's why PNG and JPEG hardly overlap, it has nothing to do with the size of the image. Palettes wouldn't make sense in JPEG, the compression method in it works on truecolor data only.
Islamic fatwa against software patents? (Score:5)
It's hopeless to expect reform from within... the patent crisis is not even on the national agenda. The average person has never even heard of the issue.
The only viable medium-term strategy is containment. US-style software patents (and business model patents and other bogosity) cannot be allowed to spread to other countries. Containment efforts should therefore shift away from the US and towards other countries and cultures.
It would be very helpful, for instance, if influential Islamic clerics could examine the issue of patents on mathematical formulas and business models and determine if they are compatible with the Quran and Islamic teachings.
I'm not Muslim and have no idea... but usury and other practices are disallowed under Islamic law, so it's possible they would disallow software patents and issue a fatwa [usc.edu] or legal opinion to that effect.
Broadly speaking, patents that cover small human ingenuities and artifices should be OK... but if the universe is the creation of God, then asserting ownership over fundamental laws of nature and mathematical formulas seems a trifle blasphemous.
A finding that software patents are un-Islamic would, in effect, permanently immunize the Islamic countries from this nonsense. It would create an invulnerable "patent haven" that would set an example for the rest of the world.
Remember, containment kept Communism in check until it collapsed under its own weight. It should work for "patent disease" as well... but it could take decades, and things will get worse before they get better.
Send RMS to Saudi Arabia... I'm not kidding.
Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:3)
IE and Netscape are too large for their customers to download on 14.4 lines in addition to per minute charges. Until Mozilla ships (hopefully < 2M) it won't be possible for them to convert to PNG.
The only other option I can think of is a plugin to handle the PNG images. Does anyone know of such a plugin?
Re:Shakedown unenforcable due to common usage (Score:3)
Ok, the way a patent works is that you give away the specs to your new invention to the public in exchange for a 17 year government-enforced monopoly on that invention.
That's not exactly how it's enforced/done now, but that's the idea.
So, they can try to take your money, and PNG is technically superior to GIF anyway.
Make the world a better place... convert your GIFs to PNGs.
PNG was over-designed (Score:3)
Slowly the spec was released. It was immediately clear that the spec was another 'ideal' format for lossless graphics that was created by people who didn't know or care what Gifs were being used for. We had been promised a replacement for Gif and this was not it. Sure it could support true-color with embedded gamma settings. But could it do animation? Of course not. Then there was MNG. To replace GIF, which takes about 20K worth of C source code (a little for for animation), I now need to support two formats, and add 120K to my application's binary. Hell, even the reference implementation didn't even work right for months and people just reading the spec were supposed to implement it.
Frankly everybody should just sit back, shut up and live with it. There was a window of opportunity to quickly create a replacement for GIF, but that day is gone. The patent expires in a few years anyway. PNG is an impressive format, but it is not the replacement for GIF we wanted or needed. We we burned by the PNG format, why should we now burn the only real cross platform lossless format. It sucks, but this is tech.
Let them know you are in compliance. (Score:4)
Re:I won't be burning any GIFs (Score:3)
Re:I won't be burning any GIFs (Score:3)
Will Slashdot play? (Score:4)
As I type this, there is an animated GIF ad just above the "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." slogan on my screen. Will Slashot ban GIFs and sacrifice the ad revenue? Or are we about to be embarrassed, thoroughly, when Burn All GIFs day is a bust?
Unfortunately, the organizers didn't do the ground work, like distributing Java or Javascript code that could provide advertisers with alternate means for doing animated ads, plus conversion scripts to instantly turn an animated ad into an alternative form. Yes, this would have required work. But since that work wasn't done, the open source community is about to be embarrassed as every webmaster who depends on ad revenue ignores the call.
Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:5)
Unisyss invested resources in developing LZW, the algorithm used by GIFs. Their owners (investors) have every right to cash in on GIFs. If there is a better alternative for the price, the market will adjust, and folks will use other compression formats. This market really does work -- with or without virtual pyros.
Relax, and choose the options that work best for you. Everything will work itself out; the fastest and biggest bank of information (um... that would be the Internet) doesn't need help from geeks in serch of a cause.
Perhaps instead of investing time and energy on Unisys and GIFs, we could be writing drivers for the open source community...
- Tom Vitolo
Just a guy who likes computers (and has a degree in Economics)
Re:Does ping support transparency? (Score:3)
Not very cool, eh?
I don't understand how they can start enforcing their patent rights to gif89a compression after it has been in heavy public use for so long. This could be likened to MS giving a program away for free for a year, and then deciding to charge everybody that has used it $200.
The $5000/Site "Shakedown" is a red herring (Score:5)
While I strongly feel we need to abolish the Patent Office, as it no longer serves to common man, and I also tend to respect many of ESR's writings and his role as an open source advocate, I really object to this type of yellow journalism that is hype-oriented and does not convey an accurate picture of the truth. The last time this thread came up on /., I wrote off the sensationalism of every webmaster has to cough up $5000 simply as ignorance. /. revealed the truth on this matter and I find the continued dishonesty via omission to be reprehensible.
How is the open source movement to have any credibility when we choose to employ the same tactics as da man?
Gifs are good tho (Score:4)
This is stupid. Not gonna happen! (Score:5)
No one -- not a single person -- doing serious commercial Internet work would consider it for a moment. Why? Clients today (and busdev, marketing types when stuff is developed internally) still hold the 3.0+ rule as ironclad, and that rules out PNG.
For the tens of millions of "nothing" sites out there that together represent a tiny percentage of Internet traffic have that as their option, of course, since they have little traffic anyway. Losing a few percent to people with old browsers isn't going to hurt them.
PNG support is too spotty in the modern browsers to seriously do it anyway. They all seem to handle things like transparency differently, and things like that.
On the low-end of the internet bell curve, wanna-be designers are way to infatuated with their animated GIFS -- the late 90's version of the blink tag. They're certainly not going to switch and give up their beloved animated icons collection.
*shrug* Seems like a reactionary move that won't get anywhere. The effort wasted changing sites to a widely-incompatible format would be better spent writing to your congresspeople and getting these rediculous century-old patent laws changed.
Re:Is the browser support there yet? (Score:5)
<script language="JavaScript"> <!--
if (navigator.mimeTypes &&
navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"] != null && navigator.mimeTypes["image/png"].enabledPlugin)
document.write('<img src="image.png">');
else
document.write('<img src="image.gif">');
// -->
</script>
<noscript>
<img src="image.gif">
</noscript>
The
Again, a simple wrapper could probably be made for this if anyone else finds it useful.
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage [linuxsupportline.com]>
Re:The $5000/Site "Shakedown" is a red herring (Score:3)
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage [linuxsupportline.com]>
Re:I won't be burning any GIFs (Score:5)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 21095 Oct 31 13:56 test.gif (GIF)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 1910 Oct 31 13:54 test.png (Indexed PNG)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 6412 Oct 31 13:58 test2.png (RGB PNG)
So does this mean you'll be converting all your pages to PNG now?
--
Reject
We aren't ready for this (Score:4)
In most browsers, PNG support is incomplete at best, buggy at worst. The rendering time for PNGs is also far greater, especially if you have a slow machine.
GIFs are also far more compact than PNGs; you can have GIFs with two or three colors. I don't believe PNGs have this ability.
JPEG is obviously not practical to replace GIF, the images are larger and lack the indexed color of GIFs as well.
The intentions might be honorable, but most sites can't afford the additional time it takes to convert and the increased bandwith usage.
This idea is a little bit ahead of its time. Maybe if software support gets better and we can all afford the increased bandwidth, then it will time to dump GIF.
Re:Whoah, Reality Check! (Score:3)
Don't worry about it. (Score:5)
I guess users of Photoshop are fine, it's just GIMP users that are effected by this. Oh, wait...
But as the Burn all GIF's page states, LZW is a patented algorythm that's inferior to superior and unpatented algorythms which is used to create obsolete GIF files.
My question is, why does anyone even care then? Use JPEG or PNG. Other formats exist. If you want to use GIF files for any reason, then there's a price to pay. That's either $5,000 for the "license" from unisys, or $49 for some cheapo program that you never need to install, just have handy to say that yes, you have a license... If you don't like their terms, there's plenty of other formats to use.
If you value compatiblity, then, it is their algorythm afterall. No matter how innane current patent laws seem, they are the law, afterall.
Good Bye HamsterDance!!! (Score:3)
Re:Is the browser support there yet? (Score:3)
burning gifs? (Score:4)
maybe it should have been delete the gifs day...
oh well
How do you tell? (Score:3)
Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score:5)
That's my take on the situation, anyway.
Re:Whoah, Reality Check! (Score:4)
You're right, for now PNG isn't really a viable alternative, it simply isn't widely supported enough to be the one true format, but it IS good enough to replace GIFs in most situations.
It's supported (to some degree) in both NS and IE (Don't know about Opera), except not fully. There are some links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ [w3.org] to test how well your browser supports it.
Netscape can't do translucencies (but it can do transparencies), and I'm pretty sure IE has some issues with it (It'll load PNGs embedded into a web page but not by themselves, it's odd). But both do have some degree of PNG support. However, I don't think they have MNG support, so it'll be difficult to replace animated GIFs (they should be elimated anyways)
Besides, the point of this isn't really to permanently replace all images on all pages, it's to get a message across about patents and gifs. There is definately enough support for that (Both in software and mindshare).
I've went off on a tangent here. I only meant to reply to say that IE does semi-support PNG. So I'll shut up now.
--
Reject
Conversion to PNG (Score:3)
I converted my pages over to PNG on general principles when Unisys started this. The only thing left in GIF format is a NetMechanic graphic, and that's hosted off of NetMechanic's servers. Unisys wants payment for that, they can talk to NetMechanic.
My problem with Unisys is that this is the third time they've changed their story. First, they put LZW compression forward to Compuserve when CIS was explicitly looking for an unencumbered graphics format. Then, when this format became popular, Unisys turned around and said that it's really encumbered, but we're only going to charge commercial vendors, not freeware. Now, they're saying they're going to charge freeware too, and individuals if you can't prove the software had a license. Yes, I know what Unisys is saying. I also know what their written statements say. They conflict, and in any conflict involving lawyers I believe only what's written on paper with a signature below it.
Long and short, I dislike Unisys's attitude and PNG does what I need and lets me avoid dealing with Unisys. No contest. Sorry, Unisys, as far as I am concerned you lose.
Re:Will this work out as hoped ? (Score:4)
Re:Gifs are good tho (Score:3)
> PNG's typically compress 5%-25% better than
> GIF's do. Not only that, but "PNG's compression
> is fully lossless" (that's off the website While
> I agree that older browsers not supporting PNG
> is a problem, they do seem to be a nice graphics
> format.
While PNGs are great, and may compress better, the current crop of browsers have a horrible time loading them (speed-, and feature support-wise). This becomes even more of a problem when people load something like quicktime, which I've seen hijack the PNG support in IE, which means you're not just loading an image, you're loading a plugin *and* an image.
Hopefully things like Mozilla will fix some of these problems, and who knows, maybe PNG support will improve in Netscape and IE. Unfortunately, that still doesn't take care of old browsers. Check your logs, you'd be *amazed* how many connections you'll see from Netscape 2.x/3.x and sometimes even older...
Why this is a good thing... (Score:4)
GIF --> PNG? As good a choice as any. (Score:3)
Personally, I'm all for it. GIF, as a graphic format, is pretty much deprecated and useless. The two uses there still are: ad-banners and tiny pictures on homepages. Yes, I would love to have transparency for PNG, but I can live without it. There are ways to circumvent the absence.
Of all the graphics I've done recently, they're just about anything but GIFs. Should it be grayscale or full-color, I just don't see the need for GIF-use any longer. It was a fine format once in its time, but evolution does happen. Even in computer world, where draggind the past along with is de facto.
True, Unisys can never enforce their license to the full. They don't even have to. There are much better formats available, and people are actually starting to use them.
As to the annoyance of potential java-banners... True, they are really horrible. The few I've witnessed are not easy for eyes and not the browsers either. Who ever said java should be kept on at all times? From personal experience it only hinders surfing. And I'm not the only one, this opinion seems to be commonly shared.
Actually, Unisys may be doing a big favor to the web community. By being greedy, they encourage the users to stop using GIFs in the first place. No, it's not the license itself but all the talk and noise it invariably generates among the public.
Now, are there any other deprecated formats, of any kind or in any use, that we should get rid of?
Help get Mozilla to support full alpha in PNG! (Score:5)
Re:I won't be burning any GIFs (Score:3)
Did someone pay for a license to use LZW compression in the gimp? If not then the gif you made doesn't use LZW compression which means the file will be larger than it would be if you used a program that supported LZW compression.
Re:what is the compression algorithm of PNG? (Score:5)
First some background for people who don't know much about compression. LZ77 and LZ78 are algorithms published by the same researchers in 1977 and 1978 which exploit repeated patterns in your data to efficiently compress information. Huffman encoding is a different technique for compression which will make the common symbols in your data take up less space.
LZW is a variant of LZ78 compression. It is modified for speed of compression. (Note: compression, not decompression). LZW is what Unisys has a patent on.
Deflate is the algorithm used by gzip and is also used by PKZip. It combines LZ77 with Huffman encoding. It nearly always compresses better than LZW because besides exploiting patterns it will also make the most frequent symbols represented by a small number of bits.
Because LZW is the thing which is patented, and Deflate doesn't use LZW, .PNGs don't have patent issues like gifs, and because Huffman encoding is used they also compress better. So, technically, they are the obvious choice. The only issue is browser compatibility.
--
Too little, too late? (Score:3)
There appear to be several things which need to happen before such a boycott could proceed successfully: