[Courses] [gimp] GIF patent

[Mary]

On Sun, Feb 20, 2005, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
> On Sunday 20 Feb 2005 5:25 am, Mary wrote:
> > For importing images I'd suggest finding a PNG or GIF image of the
> > right
> 
> heard somewhere that GIF is to be avoided for copyright reasons?

For patent reasons[1]: because the compression algorithm used was/is
patented, and people who wanted to write something (like the GIMP!) that
saved in that format were meant to pay royalties.

The patent has now expired in the US.

See http://burnallgifs.org/archives/ for info.

-Mary

[1] They're different things: copyright is a legal right to control
copies of a creative work, a patent is a legal monopoly for a period of
time over a design/process/idea.