Hi,

as far as I know the gif image format is still not free and developers have
to pay a fee if they dont want to infringe the copyright.

Therefore I was surprised that .net provides a gif-converter in the GDI+
(Image.Save [...], System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Gif). Because of the
licence annoyance, many other graphic libraries do not support gif.

So, the question is:

- Am I mistaken and the gif format is free now?
- Does Microsoft placed a contract with the copyright holder that
.net devolpers can use the format without the need of an own
agreement? Would be very nice.
- Or do .net developers still need an own licence?

All suggestions are appreciated.

Regards Daniel

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http://www.bolege.de
E-mails to specified address will NOT be read.

The Unisys LZW patent expired in the United States on June 20, 2003. The
Canadian LZW patent will expire on July 7, 2004. Corresponding patents in
the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy will expire on June 18, 2004.
The Japanese LZW patent will expire June 20, 2004. I beleive that after
these dates the patent and licensing will be unenforcable in those
countries. If you're in the states you can already use LZW compression
without a license from Unisys.

I tried to get to the unisys site to find out about this but their server
seems to be offline (perhaps their gif revenue has dried up ;-) ). I did
however find this although I cannot comment on the veracity of the
statements therein.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/19/35919/4079

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Bob Powell [MVP]
Visual C#, System.Drawing

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[quoted text, click to view]

[quoted text, click to view]

Uuh. Difficult stuff.

[quoted text, click to view]

Unfortunately I'm not, I'm german, but I can wait until June 18.

Thanks for your detailed answer.

Regards Daniel

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E-mails to specified address will NOT be read.