[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Fwd: Article: Judges Reject Appeals From Webcasters

[Eleanor Lister]

Rick Welykochy wrote:
>
> I note tha PNG evolved as an open standard for images, probably
> in response to the GIF patent. And after a number of years is now
> supported in most browsers and image editing suites.
>

only partly, though that did spur it on ... but there were other
factors, too:

1) no true network type graphic at the time, JPEG is lossy and doesn't
support alpha blending (even as a simple "invisible pixels" mode like
GIF); and GIF is limited colour range and old fashioned compression (the
infamous LZW)

2) there were a lot of activities going on, after JPEG was published
some of the developers went and invented MPEG, and others invented PNG,
and some did both (i only lurked on the discussions, mostly)

for ogg or theora there has to be a driving force that *needs* them,
probably not merely a technical replacement for patented methods so that
consumers don't pay license fees for their own works.

i don't see it yet.

regards,
    EL

------------
Eleanor Ashley Lister
South Sydney Greens
http://ssg.nsw.greens.org.au
webmistress at ssg.nsw.greens.org.au