GIF Licensing

[Sameer Bhat]

So how exactly is the web site operator supposed to know whether the .gif software used was licensed or not? And for that matter how is Unisys going to be able to tell. It's been years and years since I looked at the gif spec (89a?), but I don't remember any authored-by tags being contained in the file. Anyone know this better than I do?

[acep22]

AFAIK, the primary targets of these guys were sites building GIFs on the fly, like mapquest.com. I believe smaller apps like GIF counters fall into the same category.

[sagarpallavi]

Three years ago, I contacted UNISYS for a license to use GIF technology in some educational freeware I was writing for a class I teach. The software would be given to the students, who could then export the results of their work as GIFs to post to the class web site. The only terms under which Unisys would license the LZW patent for this use was if my university made an open-ended commitment to pay Unisys $5.00 for every copy of the software distributed. I pointed out that the accounting overhead of keeping records would surely cost more than the license fees (which would amount to about $200 a year). I had some money from a grant for developing the class and proposed to pay them a flat fee, but no, it was a per-unit fee or nothing, so I got LibPNG and haven't looked back. On the other hand, UNISYS was willing to give me a free license to use a GIF-generating program on a web server for an interactive web-based lab exercise for this class, so long as the software itself was not distributed. All in all, the faster we move to PNGs the better! However, it's worth noting that the MNG spec for animated PNGs is not yet supported by most browsers to the best of my knowledge, so your advertisers will still want their animated banner ads to be GIFs

[Tim Musschoot]

Chris I say if you feel worried Do it, Another alternative is SWF. [Unisys and Gif SUK ] This site is visited by various Windows programmers, I doubt you have many Pure Linux Heads visiting. thus I'd guess this sites visitors are 99.999 % 4+ And way over 90% 5+ Browsers Regardz Colin Davies

[BjWm]

We just installed LiveStats from www.mediahouse.com, it gives a good breakdown of who is coming to your site (by browser, by OS, and many other statistics) so you can see how many pre-4.0 browsers there are before you make any changes (free 30 days trial of the software) ( at our site 3.0 browsers were under 2 percent of visits

[nihadar]

I'd love to see GIFs die off, but advertisers won't drop it until MNG is supported. Someone suggested SWF - is that Flash? Ugh, no thanks, I don't need ActiveX/plugins running on every single page to make things even slower. As an aside, there used to be a parody/complaint site Burn All GIFs, but it seems to be down now.

[Lost User]

This is a drop in the bucket compared to the licensing fees that British Telecom may require for the use of their 'hyperlinks' invention: ;^} http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/11450.html Steven J. Ackerman, Consultant ACS, Sarasota, FL http://www.acscontrol.com steve@acscontrol.com

[Ron Raj]

Don't worry about pre v4 browsers. Your target audience here is MS-based developers, who, because they're using VC++/VB/ASP are likely to have IE 5 or higher installed. By putting that "unlicensed software" bit there, Unisys can scare web site operators into using licensed GIF software. Because their licenses are royalty-based, a sale of a licensed GIF app means royalty $$ for Unisys. Also, this may drive these unlicensed apps out of circulation. Here's my Unisys story: I sell a program called ThumbNailer. It does image thumbnails (wow!). It can be run from DOS or windows and has the ability to do GIFs. I licensed GIF/TIFF-LZW from Unisys for a $2500 pre-paid royalty fee. My GIF license specifically applies to apps that do NOT run on a server. Apps that do run on servers are subject to a different (higher) royalty and fee rate. The server vs. non-server issue is tricky. Basically, my EULA says that the app can't be run on a live web or intranet server and the user has to agree to this EULA to complete the registration process. But, some people want to generate JPG or PNG thumbnails on a server. Because my ThumbNailer EULA would forbid this, I have to maintain a separate non-GIF/TIFF-LZW version of the app that people CAN use on a server. -

[KenKen Wong]

Unisys did market the Server Licencing as an 'alternative choice to better serve our customers' - instead of licensing the software that creates the gif's. However, as lots of Unisys stories suggest, the LZW patent helps feeding the poor families of a whole department of lawyers, and they don't take it easy once they are after you. I stumbled over an very interesting story recently: http://www.serverobjects.com/lzw.html However, Unisys shouldn't be legally entitled to go after per-server fees if the GIF's were created by legally purchased software (but it moght be worth a try). Unisys typically seems to include special statements for eval versions (i.a.w if the eval version can write GIF's, you might assume they are licensed) Regarding your 'burn all gifs' question: checking your server logs is probably the best to find out ;-) I see only some minor problems: a) Transparent Images - you might be using quite a few of them, right? I have no actual experience, but most Browsers are said to have problems with this. b) Your cute little animated emoticons... ---- Another issue are the images provided together with the articles. I'm not a lawyer, but as even sceptical human sense suggests: If you generate the 'standard' gif's with a 'legal' program, and enforce PNG or JPG for the images submitted together with articles, you should be on the safe side. Personally, from time to time I do work on a Win 3.11 system (It's in a lab, and Win9x+ has to much problems with real-time data acquisition without expensive extra hardware) - with just an Netscape 3. But it can be only good for science if I can't check CodeGuru from there... The BurnAllGIF's site (http://burnallgifs.org/) someone else mentioned in the conversation is up and running - and links to quite some GIF-Free sites. Good luck, and if you get in trouble with Unisys, you can rely on a huge developer community backing you. (Not that a lawyer is interested in this...) Peter

[Madhubala Ganesan]

I also had a very unpleasant encounter with Uni$ys regarding licensing of a GIF viewer. I wrote a slideshow-type program that supports GIF and TIF and I was going to distribute it at no charge along with the source code (here ;)). Uni$ys wanted a $2500 fee as payment toward 'advanced royalties' for a license. I pointed out that this program was going to be free and there would be no royalties but that made no difference to them. They also said that the source code could not be published under any circumstances. I still can't believe this and I sincerely hope that they are not granted an extension on their patent.

[gsoap123]

Well, the good news is that "soon" this foolish will be over. The patent is due to expire on either 10-Dec-2002 (17 years from granting) or 20-Jun-2003 (20 from filing) (depending on which rule is in effect) http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='4,558,302'.WKU.&OS=PN/4,558,302&RS=PN/4,558,302