The GIF Format is Finally Patent-Free

tonymercmobily writes "Not many people noticed that the GIF file format is only now free from patents, as of the 1st of October 2006. Quick recap: first in 1999 Unisys tried to extort money from users and developers. Then, in 2003 the world hoped that the saga would finally be over. Then, in 2004, it was IBM's turn. Now, the SAGA seems to be over for real! Does anybody find Unisys' page on GIF as hilarious as I do...?"

Evidence?

[eddy]

Evidence? Except for 1x1 images and the like, you're wrong. And you shouldnt' be using 1x1 images anyhow so...

Before sending any examples, make sure you're comparing same-depth images and have used pngout [advsys.net].

I once, as a demonstration, took a review off HardOCP and converted/recompressed all their GIFs into PNG, and saved several hundreds of kilobytes.

Still webmasters continue to use GIF because of ignorance.

Re:killed the format

[russ1337]

I just found this from our friend wikipedia:

PNG [Portable Network Graphics] was created to both improve upon and replace the GIF format with an image file format that does not require a patent license to use.

so, with a free alternative, why use GIF up to now?

I also did a quick search of common file types on Google*

GIF 519,000,000

JPG 777,000,000

JPEG 111,000,000

BMP 44,700,000

PNG 111,000,000

So GIF is not all _that_ dead. * = Results could mean anything really - PNG could be Paupua New Gunnea, and BMP could be best manufacturing practices.

Re:no.

[drew]

No one in the know uses .gz anymore, they use .bz2

Not entirely true. gzip is substantially faster and less processor intensive than bzip2, and is still commonly used where speed is as important as size. gzip is also more suitable for compressing streams than bzip2, which operates on large blocks, if I remember correctly. For those reasons, gzip is still heavily if not exclusively used for on the wire compresson, for example in transparent compression of http pages or cvs downloads.

Re:Just in time...

[Rhombitruncated Cubo]

GIF isn't limited to 256 colours as you can composite multiple frames to make up a single image. See http://www.peda.com/iag [peda.com]

Re:Just in time...

[vadim_t]

Pity the library is so annoying though. I was looking at using it in a small game and found this:

http://www.3-t.com/libmng/faq.html#id-1040 [3-t.com]

It's horribly annoying, I thought "screw it", and went with plain PNG.

Wonders of the GIF.

[Jerk City Troll]

In addition to flashing banner ads and stylish web sites [homestarrunner.com], the Graphical Interchange Format has brough us another important wonder.

Your The Man Now, Dog [ytmnd.com].

Imagine if we never had such a format. Would YTMND even be possible? We can only speculate, but I, for one, would like to thank Unisys for this valuable contribution. Afterall, 361,984—and growing—YTMND sites can't be wrong!

Re:Just in time...

[value_added]

When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.

Not being a web developer, I'm not familiar with the features and benefits of MNGs, but if they're at all similar to animated GIFs, I hope Firefox's image.animation_mode=none setting will apply when visiting the web sites you design.

Stolen? Try given away.

[micromuncher]

LZW was published in IEEE in '84 by Welsh. It did not mention the patent. Some have argued this made the algorithm public knowledge. Unisys applied for the patent in '83, but did not enforce it until '89 WHEN IT WAS WIDELY ADOPTED. A lot of people that helped its adoption did so under the impression it was patent free.

So... how can it be stolen... if it was given away?

Re:Just in time...

[Carewolf]

No. Konqueror is the only browser to natively support MNGs, all other browsers need plugins. Mozilla used to some years ago, but they removed native support when no one used MNG.

Re:Evidence?

[jZnat]

That's why you use "Save for Web" in Adobe Photoshop; it basically pngcrush's it.

Re:Just in time...

[NeMon'ess]

That quote makes it sound like it supports different loops that can be sequenced together. Meaning a dancing animation could have loops of moves that play in a scripted order, instead of always the same routine repeating. That make for a smaller, and more dynamic file.

Re:If you haven't noticed....

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the use different implementations of the LZW compressor. Compression schemes are generally defined by the DECOMPRESSOR, leaving implementors to be as clever as they want as long as they write valid bitstreams. HTH.

PS. Use PNG instead. Bonus: No irritating animation!

Re:Just in time...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

" Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?"

On the CG forums I visit people frequently show animated how-to's using animated .GIFs.

Re:Stolen? Try given away.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who modded this informative? You really don't understand patent law.

LZW was published in IEEE in '84 by Welsh. It did not mention the patent. Some have argued this made the algorithm public knowledge.

By publishing it, it was made it public at that time. You don't have to mention that you filed for a patent. You certainly can say "patent pending", but you aren't required to.

Unisys applied for the patent in '83,

So, Unisys filed for the patent before it was made public. Perfectly legal.

but did not enforce it until '89 WHEN IT WAS WIDELY ADOPTED.

Does not matter at all. Unlike trademarks, where if you don't actively defend the trademark there is a risk of losing the trademark, you don't have to defend a patent to make it valid. A patent remains valid even if you don't defend it, even if you allow some people to infringe the patent without suing right away.

A lot of people that helped its adoption did so under the impression it was patent free.

Then they were mistaken. That's their own fault.

So... how can it be stolen... if it was given away?

It wasn't given away. It was published. By publishing after filing for a patent, you retain all your rights to the patent.

Now, you might want to argue that algorithms shouldn't be subject to patent law, but that's a completely different discussion.

Re:Just in time...

[OverlordQ]

Mozilla used to some years ago, but they removed native support when no one used MNG.

Not true, they removed it due to the fact that they had nobody that could maintain the code.

Re:Stolen? Try given away.

[micromuncher]

OK; bunch of you nay sayers say "ignorance of the law" is no excuse. But this isn't a case of ignorance. Two important things; disclosure and prior art. Its the same reason why Coke doesn't publish the recipe; because disclosure of a recipe (algorithm in our case) is mixing things from the domain of common knowledge. Nothing Lempel, Ziv, and/or Welsh did was unqiue. Sliding windows and dictionary substitutions for compression; I have published ACM algorithms from '68 that have similar concepts. Course now you'll argue that the patent office erred in granting the patent but that doesn't obviate that it was granted and people should have respected the patent. Thats where it becomes totally subjective; if a patent is blatently wrong, its left to the courts to figure it out, with adversaries on both sides that can afford to fight it. Joe hobbiest doesn't give a shit, and its a stretch to say ignorance in this case is willful maleficence. Why? Because if those hobbiests didn't implement the fucking thing, Unisys wouldn't have been able to capitalize on it. No damages.

Roger Miller - Whistle Stop

[tepples]

that's not the original music is it?

The original music from Hampster Dance is a sample from "Whistle Stop" performed by Roger Miller, sped up 70% (as if a 45 RPM vinyl record were being played at 78 RPM). This song originally appeared as the theme song from Disney's animated feature film Robin Hood, and when Hampster Dance went commercial, it might have proven cheaper to cover the song (as Cuban Boys did with "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia") than to license Miller's recording.

Re:What about TIFF?

[Intron]

Same patent is for LZW in gif and TIFF [scantips.com].

Re:Just in time...

[arth1]

As far as I remember, Mozilla removed MNG because of bloat and instability.

Ah, yes:
http://steelgryphon.com/blog/?p=14 [steelgryphon.com]
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19528 0 [mozilla.org]

Re:Just in time...

[Trogre]

Animation does have other uses you know, often to convey information that would be very difficult on a static page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_moves [wikipedia.org]
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/traffic/signa ls/vl-v.html [homepages.cwi.nl]

As is most often the case, it's not the format that's the problem, it's what people use it for:
http://www.citilink.com/~grizzly/anigifs/itchy.gif [citilink.com]