Mistaken ? In 1999 Unisys stated that its policy is to require a $5000 fee from websites that carry GIF images made by unlicensed software -- even nonprofit websites created and displayed with free software. Can Wikipedia prove that every GIF image uploaded to it has been created by a properly licensed GIF encoder ? I think not.
Unisys can claim any damn thing it wants. But it's what the law says that matters, and the law says that Unisys is just blowing smoke up our ass on that claim. Only the claim on encoding software has any legal merit.
Again, I'm not averse to excluding GIFs from Wikipedia for many reasons, but fear of a legitimate patent infringement claim is not one of them.0
lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Again, I'm not averse to excluding GIFs from Wikipedia for many reasons, but fear of a legitimate patent infringement claim is not one of them.0
I would agree with this. For one thing, Unisys would have to be smoking crack to sue Wikipedia, since they'd look like ogres. They'd be better off suing Yahoo or Microsoft or any of a number of other rich and unsympathetic folks.
On the other hand, there are lots of good reasons to not have GIFs around here, even if we aren't the least bit afraid of a serious lawsuit. We have an image to uphold in the free software community, at least, and we want to make crystal clear our commitment to the principles of that community.
--Jimbo
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