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Free Lossless Image Format

flif.info

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Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#121

Post by rimantas »

josteink wrote: post #71
emergentcypher wrote: post #65

Why all the hate for GPLv3?

Sharing code is no longer cool if people have to share back. Or at least so it seems. The GPL-hate in here really is quite immense, even though time and time again, RMS has been shown to be right about his stance on freedom. Should we attribute it to people's desire for a quick ("free") fix over long term considerations? It's hard to tell, but I suspect the silicon valley influence here doesn't help. There everyone w…

  > Sharing code is no longer cool if people have to share
  > back. Or at least so it seems.
But in practice if you don't care if someone using your code shares back the sharing actually increases. I guess many got fed up with RMS FUD, although from time to time some fun pops up with observation how RMS was right all along, or if he weren't then you will see how right he was in about five minutes.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#122

Post by hngiszmo »

iraphael wrote: post #23

This is really interesting. One of the most interesting parts is the progressive decoding/responsive images. http://flif.info/example.php (go to the bottom of the page). Basically, the last example shows that, if you want a scaled version of the image, you can simply stop decompressing. No need for multiple image files. Just create one with very high quality and decompress until you get the quality you want and scale…

Also no more .thumbnails folders

I imagine images appearing as fast as I can scroll, with enough visual clue to them to find images way way more quickly than with thumbnails today. As a start, thumbnails could use flif.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#123

Post by ruffyen »

I think the important thing that needs to be addressed here before this file format takes hold is how the hell you are going to pronounce this format. I don't want another gif/gif debate.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#124

Post by gillianseed »

stephencanon wrote: post #70
yiyus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No documented format (actually an explicit acknowledgement that the format will likely change). The implementation is the spec, the implementation is GPLv3, so many companies lawyers will prevent engineers even looking at it to write a clean-room implementation.

>so many companies lawyers will prevent engineers even looking at it to write a clean-room implementation.

Maybe you should look up what 'clean-room' reverse engineering is. One person looks at the code, writes down how what it does, then gives that description to another person who writes CLEAN-ROOM code based upon the description.

There's no difference in doing a clean-room implementation of GPLv3 code than of any other code license.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#125

Post by kuschku »

brianwawok wrote: post #56
davexunit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Except... how does a new image format work in modern browsers? It gets included in Chrome, IE, Safari, and Firefox. Apple and Google won't touch GPLv3, so that means this image format is dead on arrival as a web format. Sure you can use it locally to compress your photographs, cool. But it won't be a web standard with GPLv3.

Well, we could just get everyone to use Firefox, and this image format will be a web standard.

Google is currently using webp everywhere, too, despite no major browser actually supporting webp.

(I do not consider Chrome a browser, but mal- and spyware)

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#127

Post by anon1385 »

TuringTest wrote: post #108
lucian1900 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or any open source project that is not GPLv3, like Firefox.

Firefox is GPLv3 compatible. It's quite likely that it will support this format - although, if it's the only major browser doing so, it will not be adopted by most web publishers.

I would be very surprised if Firefox added support. They have been very reluctant to include any additional image formats that weren't developed by Mozilla employees. See for example WebP and Jpeg2000.

Their reasons being things like added security risk, lack of demand, lack of support in other browsers, patent risk etc, which all apply just as much to this format.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#128

Post by jobigoud »

robert_foss wrote: post #88
versteegen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who made a negative comment about the GPL elsewhere in this thread, I think I'll comment. I have absolutely nothing against the GPL, and use it myself. However, using the GPL for a library seems like a bad idea, because there are a lot of people, especially at companies, which won't touch the GPL. So if you license a library GPL and it's useful someone is just going to come along and reimplement it with a…

In the context of this project which is yet to have a finalized specification I think the GPL is an ideal format. As a project it is important to have access to all of the pieces and avoiding incompatible forks of different kinds in the early stages. So for the purpose of developing a 'golden standard' prototype for FLIF, I don't think a non-GPL license would have served them better. The author seems to have the same…

> If a company wants get something for free, expecting it to publish source code changes is not an actually high threshold.

Obviously the issue is not about publishing changes to the library, it's about publishing the rest of the source which just uses the library as a building block.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#129

Post by pierrebai »

robert_foss wrote: post #88
versteegen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who made a negative comment about the GPL elsewhere in this thread, I think I'll comment. I have absolutely nothing against the GPL, and use it myself. However, using the GPL for a library seems like a bad idea, because there are a lot of people, especially at companies, which won't touch the GPL. So if you license a library GPL and it's useful someone is just going to come along and reimplement it with a…

In the context of this project which is yet to have a finalized specification I think the GPL is an ideal format. As a project it is important to have access to all of the pieces and avoiding incompatible forks of different kinds in the early stages. So for the purpose of developing a 'golden standard' prototype for FLIF, I don't think a non-GPL license would have served them better. The author seems to have the same…

It's not about being apologetic or anti-freedom, it's all about the reality of software.

If it gets reimplemented with a more libral license, then the more liberal version will dominate. If there is any incompatibility whatsoever, the more liberally licensed version will win. Look at gcc for an example: it has gcc-specific extensions and there are other compilers with more open license. These compilers are gaining the upper-hand.

Making it GPL instead of LGPL is just a bad political choice. Especially for something which need wide adoption to even live. Image formats can only exist if they get adopted.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#130

Post by theoh »

est wrote: post #119
iraphael wrote: post #23

This is really interesting. One of the most interesting parts is the progressive decoding/responsive images. http://flif.info/example.php (go to the bottom of the page). Basically, the last example shows that, if you want a scaled version of the image, you can simply stop decompressing. No need for multiple image files. Just create one with very high quality and decompress until you get the quality you want and scale…

JPEG has something cooler, you can first load a black-white smaller picture, then load more color and more detail.

Thinking back to the old days, are you sure the black and white image you have in mind didn't come from the "lowsrc" attribute of an img tag? Progressive jpeg is typically full colour from the start, and it does offer the progressive enhancement of resolution that you mention.
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