[Savannah-hackers-public] Re: Request for Fastedit CMS

[Sebastian Wieseler]

Hey Philipp. :-)


On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 02:00:39PM +0000, Philipp wrote:
> as I researched the possiblities of using Gif images in a gnu project, I
> asked myself where the copyright of gif is?

The creator of an image is always the copyright holder. But if you only
compress or convert an image, the original author doesn't loose his/her
copyright.

 
> It is just the Lzw-compression which is under copyright.

You are talking about the copyright of the GIF format, not of a GIF image, 
right? :)

> The Gif-Image itself hasn't any Copyrights.

Don't think so. Or is the (^H^H^Wa special) image under public domain?

> What happens if i am using gif images without the Lzw-compression? 

Please devide the GIF format and the GIF image. ;-)
The compression don't depend on the copyright and license
of the GIF image (and reverse).

> Is there also a restriction from Gnu?

The only restriction from Savannah (not GNU), is, that you
are not allowed to use any GIF files, because of the GIF patent.

"Because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm 
which are used when making GIF files,
it's impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs.  These patents 
also apply to the compress program.

For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html";



If I missed anything here now - please correct me (that's why I CC'ed 
address@hidden).


Regards,
Sebastian Wieseler

-- 
CC: address@hidden