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Free Lossless Image Format

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Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#31

Post by lt »

raving-richard wrote: post #14
MasterScrat wrote: post #2

Sounds almost too good to be true... any major downside, other than current lack of support?

Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere. In other words, it's a lovely idea, but due to a poor choice of license, it won't get any adoption. C.f. Ogg Vorbis, where the license for the specification is public domain, and the license for the libraries are BSD-like. To quote FSF: Some libraries implement free standards that are competing agains…

In the forum thread I linked elsewhere, the author wrote:

"In terms of licenses: GPL is all you get for now. I can always add more liberal licenses later. LGPL for a decoding library, or maybe even MIT? We'll see, I'm not in a hurry."

https://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18485-free-lossless-ima...

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#33

Post by pmelendez »

raving-richard wrote: post #14
MasterScrat wrote: post #2

Sounds almost too good to be true... any major downside, other than current lack of support?

Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere. In other words, it's a lovely idea, but due to a poor choice of license, it won't get any adoption. C.f. Ogg Vorbis, where the license for the specification is public domain, and the license for the libraries are BSD-like. To quote FSF: Some libraries implement free standards that are competing agains…

> Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere.

Why not? As far as I know, GPL3 let you to dinamically link without having to open the source code the resulting software.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#34

Post by versteegen »

foldor wrote: post #28
chmike wrote: post #11

I couldn't see any information on speed performances. There is certainly a price to pay for these impressive results. It could be the compression time. I hope not the uncompressing time.

I'm guessing that they're not releasing the numbers on that yet until the format is finalized. It's likely not gone through any serious optimizations yet.

See the quote I pulled out above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10318161

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#35

Post by versteegen »

pmelendez wrote: post #33
raving-richard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere. In other words, it's a lovely idea, but due to a poor choice of license, it won't get any adoption. C.f. Ogg Vorbis, where the license for the specification is public domain, and the license for the libraries are BSD-like. To quote FSF: Some libraries implement free standards that are competing agains…

> Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere. Why not? As far as I know, GPL3 let you to dinamically link without having to open the source code the resulting software.

You're thinking of LGPL. GPL has no such exception for dynamic linking.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLStaticVsDynamic

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#36

Post by espadrine »

kcorbitt wrote: post #17
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #10

Where are the images to compare? Bellard has a very neat demonstration on his page http://xooyoozoo.github.io/yolo-octo-bugfixes/#nymph&jpg=s&b... BTW, credit to the flif people for linking competitor formats bpg and webP

Well given that they're all lossless formats, the image should appear identical with any of the codecs, with only the file size (and encoding style) being different. More practically, since browsers won't have an flif decoder there isn't an easy way to embed the images online without reencoding them in a different format, which would rather defeat the purpose of putting up sample images.

They could demonstrate interlacing comparisons by slowing down (through setTimeout()) the image processing in the browser.

Having a Youtube video already shows that it works really amazingly well (especially coming from Adam7), but seeing it interactively on a selection of images would be nice.

After all, the single biggest feature is that you can actually stop downloading the image whenever you feel like you don't want to spend more bandwidth!

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#37

Post by versteegen »

lt wrote: post #31
raving-richard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is GPL3, it won't be supported by Google on Android, by Apple probably anywhere, or by Microsoft anywhere. In other words, it's a lovely idea, but due to a poor choice of license, it won't get any adoption. C.f. Ogg Vorbis, where the license for the specification is public domain, and the license for the libraries are BSD-like. To quote FSF: Some libraries implement free standards that are competing agains…

In the forum thread I linked elsewhere, the author wrote: "In terms of licenses: GPL is all you get for now. I can always add more liberal licenses later. LGPL for a decoding library, or maybe even MIT? We'll see, I'm not in a hurry." https://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18485-free-lossless-ima...

Wow, starting with an unusable license with the intention to switch to a more practical one later is a weird strategy. I guess that's one way to discourage people from adopting it before it's ready.

(Edit: As I clarified, I meant usable for adoption in other non-GPL projects. But OK, I deserve the downvotes for adding very little, and will think twice before posting such a reply next time)

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#38

Post by yiyus »

alphabetam wrote: post #32

GPL 3. Meaning it won't ever be adopted by anyone.

IANAL, but I guess the file format itself is not covered by the GPL 3, only the reference implementation.

They specifically say that "FLIF is completely royalty-free and it is not encumbered by software patents". So, I suppose people will be allowed to develop their own libraries with another license.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#40

Post by davexunit »

versteegen wrote: post #37
lt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the forum thread I linked elsewhere, the author wrote: "In terms of licenses: GPL is all you get for now. I can always add more liberal licenses later. LGPL for a decoding library, or maybe even MIT? We'll see, I'm not in a hurry." https://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18485-free-lossless-ima...

Wow, starting with an unusable license with the intention to switch to a more practical one later is a weird strategy. I guess that's one way to discourage people from adopting it before it's ready. (Edit: As I clarified, I meant usable for adoption in other non-GPL projects. But OK, I deserve the downvotes for adding very little, and will think twice before posting such a reply next time)

>unusable license

Pure bullshit. Unusable for whom? Proprietary software developers? That's the intent.

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