The PNG increased its popularity but couldn’t erase the GIF, even after Burn All GIFs Day. However, PNGs couldn’t animate, because the creators of the PNG didn’t want animation. PNG supported thousands of colors (GIF format supports only 256 colors), offered better transparency and it was completely open-source and patent-free. The name eventually became PNG, yet the pronunciation remains as of PING. The firstly proposed name was PING, Ping is not GIF.
In 1996, the mentioned group of engineers released the first version of Portable Network Graphics (PNG). We expect that the CompuServe-Unisys action will spell the death of GIF as a commercially viable technology, shifting the attention of the online communications community to JPEG imaging.”Īfter the announcement, the engineers including those who took part in the creation of JPEG started to debate GIF alternatives on the Usenet newsgroup “aphics” under the name of “ Thoughts on a GIF-replacement file format”. The announcement of the CompuServe-Unisys GIF Tax on December 29, during the lull between Christmas and New Year’s Day, was clearly timed to cause maximum damage while an unsuspecting public celebrated the holidays. “The announcement by CompuServe and Unisys that users of the GIF image format must register by January 10 and pay a royalty or face lawsuits for their past usage, is the online communications community’s equivalent of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. wrote a protest letter after the announcement: Pat Clawson, President, and CEO of one TeleGrafix Communications Inc. This caused an outrage, GIFs were going to start costing money. In late 1994, it was announced that Unysis would license LZW compression to CompuServe for use in the GIF, in exchange for a fee.
Battilana, The GIF Controversy: A Software Developer’s Perspective, 1995Īs Michael Battilana pointed out, although LZW compression was widely used and CompuServe used it for the GIF format in 1987, Unysis had already granted a patent on LZW compression. No one in the community at large had known.” Michael C. “After all the work and success, it turned out that suddenly there was a patent. Image: Enthusiasms, Dancing Baby (also known as Baby Cha-Cha), one of the first animated GIFs Patent Issues
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