Re: Latest UNISYS LZW patent nonsense -- $5,000 for every web site
On Wed, Aug 25, 1999 at 06:22:40PM -0400, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Ben Gertzfield <che@debian.org> writes:
>
> Well, UNISYS is up to it again. They want $5,000 (count 'em: five
> THOUSAND DOLLARS) from *every* web site that uses GIFs, TIFFs, or PDF
> files with LZW compression.
>
> Well, that's the end of the GIF format. I predict that everyone's
> going to move to PNGs if Unisys really follows up on this.
>
> Unisys is probably trying to jack up their patent profits for now
> since the patent expires in, IIRC, 2002.
Besides I think we will face yet another problem. All developers
with packages that include gifs in /usr/doc or in any web page should
check them to see If we are not pottentially sending a 5K dollar bill to
all our users... :)
--macan
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