From:	 Don Marti <dmarti@zgp.org>
To:	 Rebecca Sobol <lwn@lwn.net>
Subject: Burn All GIFs
Date:	 Thu, 1 Nov 2001 10:53:48 -0800

To the editor:

The November 1, 2001 LWN states that "Unisys has never tried
to enforce its patent" on the LZW compression algorithm used in
GIF images.

This is, unfortunately, incorrect.  Unisys collects royalties from
all software developers using GIF including
web sites that generate GIFs dynamically, as in a weather map.

Just having a license to a Unisys-licensed graphics program or
library does not give you a license to generate GIFs on the fly in
your own application or even on your own web site.

Unisys has not sued any site for infringement for merely displaying static
GIFs, but Oliver Picher of Unisys says
that even distributing static GIFs created without a Unisys license may be
contributory infringement.

Thankfully we have PNG and MNG, which are high-quality, more capable,
replacements for GIF.  Increasingly aggressive patent enforcement
from Unisys will just cause more GIF-burning.

I am the webmaster of burnallgifs.org.  More information on GIF is
available there.

-- 
Don Marti          What do we want?  Free Dmitry!  When do we want it?  Now!
http://zgp.org/~dmarti
dmarti@zgp.org                                  Free the web, burn all GIFs.
                                                     http://burnallgifs.org/