The last of Unisys’ patents on LZW (the compression scheme used in the GIF image format), the Canadian one, expires today (July 7th 2004). The US one expired last year; the European ones have been expiring on various dates over the past two weeks.
However, IBM still holds a patent on LZW which expires on the 11th of August 2006. As it covers exactly the same things as the Unisys one, it’s almost certainly invalid, and IBM has certainly never tried to enforce it. Still, sadly, it provides extra fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Still, practically, I expect this means that packages like The GIMP will start shipping GIF modules as standard now. Of course, anyone who hasn’t yet switched to PNG for their website is a muppet. :-)
PNG isn’t always the answer. I like JPEG best.
JPEG is great for displaying photos with, but hardly appropriate for the situations where the lossless GIF format is typically used. It’s completely unsuited to diagrams or things where you want transparency…
JNG please!
Following the principle of “best tool for the job”, GIF is never the best tool for the job – PNG can do everything GIF can, and more, and better.
As a general rule, I use JPEG for photographs (recorded images) and PNG for graphics (generated images).
<troll> What about restoring MNG support in Mozilla ? </troll>
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