🚀 go-pugleaf

Matt Smith (msmith@unislc.slc.unisys.com) wrote:
: ObDisclaimer:  I speak for myself, not for the company.  After all,
: would you let me speak for you?  God I hope not.  I get in enough
: trouble speaking for myself.

: Terry Leroux (tleroux@infinet.com) wrote:
: : Al Lipscomb (arl@news.IntNet.net) wrote:
: : : Lets also look at Compuserve in all this. They could have elected to bear
: : : the cost of the license themselves. They are after all the ones who
: : : brought the GIF format to its present status. When Microsoft lost the
: : : Stacker litigation they did not pass the cost on to their customers (and
: : : I do not like Microsoft). Compuserve could have purchased a license for
: : : all applications using the LZW algorithum in relation to the GIF
: : : specification. They instead elected to pass the cost on.
[Some of my stuff cut]
: : Could you honestly say that if you were in charge of CompuServe, that you
: : would pay royalties to Unisys for AOL's and Prodigy's use of the GIF
: : standard? As the head of CompuServe, you freely made available a standard
: : that all these people made money off of (since Unisys is aparantly not
: : going to charge licensing fees for freeware). While using this standard
: : they paid you no fees even though they profited, and now that Unisys
: : wants licensing fees your going to pay for everyone else? Why do I find
: : that unbelievable?

: Woah.  You're way off base here.  Let's go back for a second and see
: if we can straighten this out:
: 1)  Unisys holds the patent on the LZW compression technique
: 2)  Compuserve developed the GIF standard and uses it extensively to
:     have their users access CIS.

: Now, the only licensing fee you have to pay Compuserve is whenever you
: purchase something from them to access CIS.  Compuserve couldn't care
: less about programs which generate or view GIF images.  An independent
: individual who is developing a GIF viewer would have to go to Unisys
: independently of Compuserve and get a license.

More or less right (CompuServe has an ASCII mode, which means they don't
even license out that type of access to their service.) More to the
point though, it was Al Lipscomb that seemed to feel that CompuServe
should find out how much that independant developer would have to make in
royalty payments. Then Compuserve should make those payments to Unisys
for the developer. (Essentially buy the patent off of Unisys for use in
GIF and give it away.)

: So Compuserve doesn't have to bear the brunt AOL and Prodigy using GIF
: images.  AOL and Prodigy have to purchase licenses from Unisys as well
: to sell any products which generate or view GIF images.

I know they don't have to pay, I'm just pointing out how stupid it would
be for Compuserve to pay for their competitor's licenses. Basically I was
wondering if Al had thought about his position at all, so I asked to put
himself in the position of the head of CompuServe and think if he'd would
consider doing what he suggested.

: I hope this makes sense now.  I'm not familiar enough with Compuserve
: to know exactly what they sell that is affected by the licensing
: agreement.  I've never even used Compuserve.

Actually the only thing that they "sell" is the Compuserve Information
Manager which happens to have a GIF decoder in it so you can view graphics
you've downloaded without leaving that program. You can access and
navigate the service without this.