Copyright stuff

I don''t think you COULD copyright something like that and enforce it...

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Copyright (C) 2003 By a pack of NAZIS

UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus

*cough* GIF compression *cough*

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So, rather than a simple answer, I am to infer that either:

a) you don''t know the answer
b) you didn''t understand the question
c) you are a large penis

quote:

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Original post by AnonymousPosterChild
*cough* GIF compression *cough*

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Uhh...but look at all the programs that can open GIFs...

500 x Nazi

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Copyright (C) 2003 By a pack of NAZIS

UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus

But how many can save them?

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So, rather than a simple answer, I am to infer that either:

a) you don''t know the answer
b) you didn''t understand the question
c) you are a large penis

MS Paint can.

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design _ theory _ discussion

quote:

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Original post by AnonymousPosterChild
But how many can save them?

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Lots of programs can save GIFs..

- MS Paint
- Photoshop
- GIMP
etc etc...

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Copyright (C) 2003 By a pack of NAZIS

UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus

Compression algorithms are patented, not copywritten.

This is a good thing: It encourages companies to spend R&D money on new technologies, which the public gets benefit of once patents expire.

Microsft would have to invent or improve a compression method to get a good patent on it. The long-run benefits to the sciences would outweigh any short term damage to open source products compatibility.

quote:

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Original post by AnonymousPosterChild
But how many can save them?

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Certainly you are kidding.

First of all, protecting compression algorithms have to do with patents, not copyrights. The programs that can save GIF files have all either licensed (something that Microsoft could chose not to do) the LZW-compression patent from Unisys or do not implement the compression properly (like GIMP).

Microsoft has already used patents to keep open source developers from using one of their formats, the ASF format, and their leaked internal documents have indicated that they would use secret and patented protocols as a strategy to combat Linux. So, it is possible that they could do something similar with the Word document format but for now the obscurity of the format seems to have effectively prevented perfect decoders/encoders.

Addition:

quote:

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Microsft would have to invent or improve a compression method to get a good patent on it.

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Actually, I don't think they have to 'improve' the compression to get a patent under US laws, they would probably just have to modify an existing one to make it unique (but not better, except for the purpose of shutting out competition).

Your uncritical view of patents can also clearly be questioned, especially since the computer industry has done so well without them for so long. What would the computer industry have looked like if one company had managed to get 17 year exclusive rights on say, word processing or spreadsheet software?

[edited by - HenryAPe on February 15, 2003 6:33:03 PM]

On the subject of GIF issues, AFAIK it is okay to make software (free or commercial) that includes a LZW decoder. On the other hand, they (whoever owns the LZW patent) can require a license for software that includes a LZW encoder. However, their policy is to not enforce that on free software but only on commercial software.

As far as decoding goes, I think it would be similar if Microsoft did patent parts of Office documents. That is, OpenOffice would be allowed to open any future documents, but to write them might be troublesome. A solution, although not satisfying, is to write files in current (unpatented) Office formats.

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quote:

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Original post by HenryApe
Actually, I don't think they have to 'improve' the compression to get a patent under US laws, they would probably just have to modify an existing one to make it unique (but not better, except for the purpose of shutting out competition).

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Well, they have to make modifications enough to make it a separate algorithm; otherwise they'll get drowned in prior art. I suppose that they could come up with a worse algorithm; but that's not really MS's style - they'll wait until they have something new and better coming out of R&D and patent that.

quote:

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Your uncritical view of patents can also clearly be questioned, especially since the computer industry has done so well without them for so long. What would the computer industry have looked like if one company had managed to get 17 year exclusive rights on say, word processing or spreadsheet software?

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The software industry isn't where it used to be. Computer Science is by no means mature, but all the 'easy finds' have already been made. To ensure scientific progress, we need to fund research. The government's funding a bunch right now but that's rapidly becoming insufficient. Besides, the most promising stuff that'll actually be of practical use tends to be privately funded.

We're heading towards the model that pharmaceuticals are using: One company develops a new product and gets exclusive rights to it for a time, then the generics hit the market. I really don't see a problem with that.



[edited by - cheesegrater on February 15, 2003 12:12:17 AM]

quote:

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Your uncritical view of patents can also clearly be questioned, especially since the computer industry has done so well without them for so long.

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Actually, patents on software are fairly new, so you can''t judge the progress of computers based on that fact.

Previously, you couldn''t patent an idea, mathematical formula, processing steps, or any such thing. The way in which companies got around that was to build a device that compresses data and to patent that device.

The GIF patent was denied for a long time until the patent office decided it needed to bring in new revenue to keep afloat, so it decided to allow software patents. That''s not to say that they didn''t allow previous entries before allowing these patents. There are quite a few BS patents that were accepted a long time ago, the most notable in my mind being the one about databases (I think Borland had it) that made it difficult for any company to make a database system.

Personally, software patents are a load of garbage, and do hurt the industry. If you do the research, you''ll find that a badly worded software patent can cause massive havok. For instance, while recently developing some facial recognition methods, I came upon a software patent that describe their methods.

Their methods contain no code, only descriptions. They gave such a broad description of the code that it could mean anything. Now, here I am developing software that infringes on their patent (even though the code and techniques are different) and I had to give up.

It''s not that I couldn''t prove that my code was different, it''s that the patent office doesn''t care about code - only descriptions.

Do a search for patently absurd on goggle and you should find some interesting information about how badly the patent office works.