[News] Serious allegations about H&P | ANN.lu |
Posted on 08-Nov-2001 14:17 GMT by Christian Kemp | 164 comments View flat View list |
Amigo follows up on serious allegations about H&P and says: "I also just asked Unisys as it says here, and am waiting for a reply. If true, H&P could probably be forced to close."
[ If H&P indeed didn't pay royalties for Unisys' GIF algorithm, they might not be forced to close per se, but if this is indeed true, and Unisys decides to sue, they might have to pay some serious fines. Also note that while this is not in unmoderated, it's highly speculative, unconfirmed and generally should be taken with the usual grain of salt - CK ]
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Serious allegations about H&P : Comment 45 of 164 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 09-Nov-2001 01:57 GMT | In reply to Comment 44 (janne): > if it's the cloanto gif.datatype this is not a violation
> of the unisys license since it stated (when the gif.datatype
> was released) that public domain versions did not require a
> license and the cloanto gif.datatype was released
> as a public domain addidition (I think the
> personal_gif_io.library was stated as being licensed)
Cloanto did not do that, and Unisys never stated that as
far as it was concerned public domain versions would be
license-free, especially as it became obvious that
companies were trying to separate their GIF code and
make it available for free download, but to the benefit
of some other software they were selling, in an attempt
to escape the Unisys license/royalty. But Cloanto never
did this. Cloanto itself always only used the DataType and the
I/O library on CDs and online distributions for which it paid
royalties to Unisys, e.g. Personal Suite, Personal Paint,
Amiga Forever, etc. Cloanto never distributed any GIF/LZW
code outside of these licensed contexts, not even for free
download on Aminet. On Aminet you will find a statement by
Cloanto about GIF/LZW, but not a GIF/LZW file uploaded by
Cloanto. Aminet does not even accept GIF/LZW code.
It is however true that Cloanto gave up its rights to its personal_gif_io.library, making it public domain _as far as
Cloanto was concerned_. What Cloanto made possible was for
somebody to take its GIF library and use it without being
sued by Cloanto, but not without being sued by Unisys or
possibly others, if they had valid patents in the region
in which the distribution occurred. Cloanto never directly
or indirectly profited from this, or reduced the royalties
it had to pay, it simply said it would not sue. And it kept
paying royalties for the copies of its software which it
sold. It never said "take my software without GIF, and then
download the free GIF add-on", which would have effectively
been a circumvention of the patent license.
Cloanto also developed a GIF DataType, but I don't think
it ever distributed it other than on its own products,
and certainly not after the problems related to GIF
emerged. Even if you took the DataType by Cloanto from
a Cloanto package, and assuming Cloanto let you do this,
you would still have to deal with Unisys however. There
is no way known to me to escape the Unisys issue until
the patent expires, which will be in a few years.
I think you are confusing with the Cloanto PNG DataType,
which indeed Cloanto distributed for free. |
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