The event, which so far isn't scheduled for an actual date, was started in
anger over the discovery that Unisys
is making a new effort to extract royalties out of US
patent 4,558,302, commonly known as the LZW compression method.
Created by Terry Welch of Sperry Corporation in 1983, LZW eventually
became Unisys property when Sperry merged with
Burroughs Corporation to form Unisys in 1986. LZW is at the heart of
the GIF file format. If you make or store GIF files, you're using patented
LZW formulas -- and Unisys wants money from you.
Of course, this means that GIFs are off-limits to open source users, who
aren't used to paying for licenses. The League
for Programming Freedom (LPF), which is closely related to the GNU project (LPF was co-founded by GNU leader
Richard Stallman), is trying to fight this kind of technology hoarding.
And, as a result, you'll see no GIFs on the GNU or LPF Web sites.
As far as the GIF-using community knew, no terms existed on using the GIF
format until 1995, when CompuServe shocked its community by revealing
its deal with Unisys and spelling out terms by which
developers would pay licensing fees.
But that agreement covered only CompuServe users. The rest of the online
community was -- and is -- still open to attack. While maintaining that
users of GIF viewers were safe, Unisys began
pursuing its patent claims against companies whose graphics software was
capable of writing GIF-format files. To let everyone know it was serious,
Unisys in 1998 went after Corel and was able to get retroactive fees in an
out-of-court settlement.
Fork it over
Unisys now says that it wants a $5,000
license from anyone running a Web site that contains GIF files made by
unlicensed creation software. And that's just for starters. If your
Web site carries banner ads, has any password-protected areas or does any
electronic business transactions, you'll have to negotiate your own
license with Unisys which is certain to cost you more than $5K. Heck,
think of the legal fees alone involved in getting into a
roll-your-own contract with Unisys.
Note that even software intended for free distribution needs to be
licensed (at a non-free price), according to at
least one software developer.
Unisys maintains that "most" Web sites should not need to get LZW licenses,
because they're using GIF files created by licensed creation software. So
where can one find a list of such eligible software?
It doesn't exist.
Unisys spokesman Oliver Picher estimates that about 85
percent of the world's graphics creation software is licensed, but says Unisys does
not supply a full list of LZW-licensed software. Citing disparate wording in the more than 2,000 LZW licenses, Unisys only offers a "representative list" of less than 20 licensed companies.
So a company wanting to remain within
the letter of the law needs to get the site license unless it can prove
that every GIF on its site was created by licensed software.
If this doesn't sound like the actions of a company with too many lawyers
on its payroll, I don't know what does. Unisys is as good a paragon of the
old mainframe mind-set as any. And what about open source? I can't even
find evidence that the company has really grasped concepts like the PC and
the Internet. And I admit that I'm still angry that Unisys bought
Convergent Technologies in 1988 and almost immediately destroyed its
product line (which included the cute little Unix-only PC that AT&T sold as the
3B1).
How do you show your displeasure? The Burn All GIFs people have an idea,
but they're not sure where or when yet. I guess it figures that when an event like this comes out of Silicon Valley, it can't conflict with important things like Burning Man.
Funny, Burning Man seemed like a perfect place to be burning GIFs.
But I guess I'm not enough into valley culture...
Will you be burning your GIFs? Let us know in the Talkback below or the ZDNet Linux Forum. Or write to Evan directly at evan@starnix.com.
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