Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Just ran into the GIF patent extortion!

Author:Bob Frankston
Posted:7/24/2000; 7:29:54 PM
Topic:Just ran into the GIF patent extortion!
Msg #:18984
Prev/Next:18983 / 18985

(This is from a letter I sent to Dave. If you post a reply please also send me a note at GIF@Bobf.Frankston.com since I don't regular read the discussion)

I don't know if you've been following the GIF controversy -- it's been around for a long time. But like, other's I've been annoyed but distant. Until I tried to write a trivial program to save a file in GIF format. Rather than write the routine myself (like I've done years ago) I thought I could find a simple program to use, especially from VB or other simple language.

And I almost did. There are some apps from $50 and up. But in order to legally write a GIF file I must get a license from Unisys. But, going to their site, I find that there is a special rate for small developers, only $5000 for two servers!

This is an outrage and extortion. Extortion because they didn't start charging till GIF was locked in and then carefully made sure Big Companies paid them off since that is all they seem to care about. PNG is an alternative but I find that the support is amazingly limited -- BigCo's have no interest and "open" developers seem to be caught in second system effects and also add complexity to support every possible little machine with a few K of memory. But the browser and tools (like FrontPage) have, at best, grudging support.

So we have Unisys lawyers who are mining patents that were innocuous -- as PNG demonstrates, GIF didn't need to rely it but did because it seemed a safe decision.

I find this worse that one-click. At least one-click, while marginally better than other approaches, doesn't have such a pervasive effect in discriminating against the small developers who are the real sources of innovation.

This is the real problem with patents and something that was really missed at the discussion at PC Forum. There are those who see software as just another engineering discipline with the emphasis on discipline. But programming is too important to be left to professionals. Those who do not have a large staff to devote to patent issues. Much worse, they are running through a lot of ideas per day and unless they are stupid, they are all obvious ideas. That was my point about patents discriminating against intelligence.

I didn't articulate it then but those who are in the more commercial world of large planned projects have trouble understanding that the real problem is not big companies fighting each other but the collateral damage in this new world where small developers not only make a difference but are vital.

Imagine having to license SOAP at $5000/Server because it uses the notion of RPC with angle brackets ...

Bob Frankston http://www.Frankston.com

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