boy u hav to check this out
http://burnallgifs.org/

www.linuxquetions.org does use gif's
time to switchover to png?

so what about animated gifs

those are annoying to me.. i say burn those too..

-trickykid

And here I thought that MicroSucks was the only comapny that would try to pull that kind of crap.

Guess I was wrong.

And here I thought that MicroSucks was the only comapny that would try to pull that kind of crap.

Guess I was wrong.

Who would have thought?

There is IMO no excuse for something like. Patents are going to be a pain in the backside if companies are allowed to get away with what Unisys is trying to do. Besides - can you imagine the problems they must have with trying to implement their decision.

Does it mean LQ.og could be liable? Do we have to get written agreement or something? It's pointless!

Bah humbug!

Moving to PNG's is not a bad idea and will probably happen at some time in the future. MANY things are taking a higher priority at this point however.

--jeremy

Well its like that company British Communications or something that is claiming that they have the patent rights to internet hyperlinks.. imagine if you had to pay a royalty for every link you made....

-trickykid

BT. heh, funny, mainly because it's true though.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/11450.html

but claiming in 76 and then being granted it in 89 after they discovered it never went thru deems it a little late ya think.. even the judge said it is too wide spread cause if they did get the patent in 76, then companies would have thought of other ways around it... oh well, they won't ever get royalties on it.. it would be impossible for them to look up every site or program with links to get money from..

-trickykid

This is the same stupid kinda crap that makes ordinary peoples lives difficult. Intellectual property, in my opnion, should not be patented, as it cuases more problems than it helps. Maybe they can trademark it, so they are given creidt, but that is really it. Computer software, system formats, and even the Humna Genome are all subject to hard lock down because companies are allowed to get to greedy.

All patents do is hinder development, and force people to look for ways around it. Or as I know some others who blatently break the law anyway. I probably would.

And this would not even require a company to be open-source. It would just make them have to play nice with others, and not be so controlling.

Thats my thoughts for whatever they are worth

Oh, the irony... burnallgif.org links the Unisys patent to Delphion.com, the payment oriented IBM child-monster of IP sites instead of the USPTO's free register. What yahoos!

I also may be on crack, but if this thing was issued in 1985, then the technology falls into public domain... this December! The most Unisys could hope for would be remuneration. Then most users would have very little to worry about as there really isn't an issue of continuing infringement... Oh bloody hell.

Anyway, abandoning one perfectly good albeit rather outdated graphics format just because some bloated IP pseudo-technology company *cough* *cough* lawyer cabal *cough* *cough* friggin Rambus *cough* has rights over one compression algorithm used in it, is simliar to not using openssh just because you think Theo da Raadt is a weiner, which he is, but that doesn't stop me from using it. There are all sorts of "borrowed territory" out there in IP land that have "algorithms" and "methods" that are covered under patents, but which the assignee companies have allowed to be part of open standards.

What Shadowhacker said was quite correct, and Alan Cox has been off on this for a while, that the USPTO, WIPO and EuroPat have been given free license to give companies proprietary right over common sense has ballooned to the level of absurd. The gradient used for patentability by the USPTO is a phrase similar to "beyond a reasonable doubt", it is: "new and un-obvious". Herein the problem lies, un-obvious to whom? To put it bluntly, the USPTO, being one of the most congressionally abused governmental agencies, can't afford to employ hackers.

I've been a clerk in a patent library for too darn long...

Cheers,

Finegan