Re: Learn from recent history. from Glenn Randers-Pehrson on 2001-10-03 (www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org from October 2001)

From: Glenn Randers-Pehrson <glennrp@home.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 11:09:05 -0400
To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20011003110905.00d19cb0@netmail.home.com>

>Do you remember what happened to GIF as a format? Everyone used it, but as
>the patent was called and it started to cost, it virtually vanished within
>a month.

Nothing of the sort actually happened.  GIF is still going strong.
Commercial software developers paid the tribute.  Support of GIF's
replacement, PNG by the major browser makers has been abysmal, even
though PNG was released as W3C's first Recommendation 5 years ago.

Freeware developers, however, were forced to drop GIF support.  DuPont,
for example, was forced by UniSys to stop distributing ImageMagick,
and ImageMagick was forced to stop distributing binaries with LZW
support.

Glenn Randers-Pehrson (PNG, MNG, libpng, pngcrush, ImageMagick)

Received on Wednesday, 3 October 2001 11:12:00 UTC