| Re: [AD] GIF patent / support |
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On 2004-09-20, Matthew Leverton <meffer@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Anyway, I agree that the FAQ should be updated - by either
> removing the entry or pointing to some GIF addons. I've got one
> I made myself that can read GIFs and I've seen some other ones.
Proposed patch.
Index: docs/src/faq._tx
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/alleg/allegro/docs/src/faq._tx,v
retrieving revision 1.37
diff -u -r1.37 faq._tx
--- docs/src/faq._tx 28 Apr 2004 08:30:21 -0000 1.37
+++ docs/src/faq._tx 4 Oct 2004 08:34:46 -0000
@@ -653,10 +653,17 @@
@@ Why can't Allegro read GIF files?
- Unisys has a patent on the LZW compression algorithm that is used by
- the GIF format. We want everything in Allegro to be freely usable
- without any restrictions whatsoever, which means we can't include any
- code that is subject to licensing or the payment of royalties.
+ Unisys had a patent on the LZW compression algorithm that is used by
+ the GIF format. We wanted everything in Allegro to be freely usable
+ without any restrictions whatsoever, which means we couldn't include
+ any code that is subject to licensing or the payment of royalties.
+ <p>
+ The GIF patent expired worldwide on "insert date here", so now GIF
+ reading/saving code could be included. However, there are several
+ addons which implement this feature (you can find some listed
+ at <link>http://www.allegro.cc/</a>). Having this kind of code in an
+ addon has always been fine, so we don't see any reason to include
+ them now in the main distribution.
@@ My program crashes all the time. Could this be a bug in Allegro?