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I remember the hullabaloo around this patent and using GIFs at the time. But nothing ever came of it, did it? People just ignored the patent and carried on as
by JoyrexJ9 4y ago
I remember the hullabaloo around this patent and using GIFs at the time.
But nothing ever came of it, did it? People just ignored the patent and carried on as normal as far as I can tell.
- jandrese 4y agoThe patents expired shortly afterward. I figure some lawyers made some money at big companies in the 2-3 year window where they could.
- mewse-hn 4y agoGIF used to be a general purpose image format even for static images. Without the awareness campaign, enterprising devs would probably have extended the gif format to more than 8bpp and we wouldn't use PNG for that today. I'd call that a considerable result.
- hedgehog 4y agoI don't think there was a lot of immediate action because GIF was already entrenched but I'm guessing a lot of people learned from the situation. It sure made an impression on me.