🚀 go-pugleaf

On 08 Jan 1995 19:46:52 GMT Heikki Suonsivu (hsu@cs.hut.fi) wrote:


> The more interesting question is that is this an indication of economical
> trouble at Unisys?  I can't figure out how Unisys is going to gain more
> profit out of this than it will loose in market share lost because of the
> anger of the people.

Disclaimer:  I am a Unisys employee.  However, these comments are mine alone.
They are not an official statement from Unisys and are not to be construed as
such.  They probably don't even reflect the official views of Unisys.

Unisys is not in the home computing market.  Unisys is a multinational
corporation that deals primarily with mainframe computing needs.  Our largest
customers are familiar to many of you:  Home Shopping Network, Federal Reserve
Bank, US government.  Unisys builds the NEXRAD system which provides wind
shear and microburst warning systems to airports.  Unisys provides the
Point-of-Sale systems for the US Postal Service and U-Haul.  The US Coast
Guard is a large user of the CTOS/BTOS operating system.

Given this profile of our customer base I sincerely doubt that this relatively
minor fiasco over the use of LZW in the GIF spec will cost Unisys any
noticable amount of market share.

> But doing something which makes every Internet user to be forced to
> download a new version of his WWW viewer and convert all his pictures
> affects, in addition to some price increase for software.

There is no such effect.  Unisys has already announced that existing
applications will not be require a license for using LZW.  The browser you use
today, as I understand it, is okay to use after January 10.  So are any other
tools that use GIF.  New applications (and I would expect, new versions of the
existing applications) would need a license.  That license is an issue between
the developper and Compuserve or the developper and Unisys.  End users need
not be affected.