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Free Lossless Image Format

flif.info

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Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#131

Post by mark-r »

TuringTest wrote: post #102
lucian1900 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, it makes it impossible to use in practice. None of the major browsers are GPLv3.

The Mozilla Public License used by Firefox is compatible with the GPL. Also, if it's a file format and not just a particular library, shouldn't it be possible to reimplement support for it under different licenses on different browsers?

If the only spec is the code, that's going to be prohibitively difficult. There's a warning that the format isn't complete either, and you can expect breaking changes.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#132

Post by panzi »

hngiszmo wrote: post #122
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.

I think some formats already support embedded thumbnails. (EXIF metadata can contain thumbnails, I believe)

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#133

Post by anon1385 »

bdisraeli wrote: post #89
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…

If companies don't want to use code licensed under the GPL, they're probably welcome to pay the original the author for a separate license.

Is there any evidence that the author will sell commercial licences? Other comments are describing him as a strong proponent of free software, so it seems very unlikely that he is interested in selling proprietary licences.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#134

Post by snuxoll »

zanny wrote: post #98
lucian1900 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, it makes it impossible to use in practice. None of the major browsers are GPLv3.

The GPL is compatible with BSD, MPL, and MIT licenses that Firefox / Chromium use. The problem is more that Firefox / Chrome ship proprietary bits like the DRM modules that would violate the linking GPL coverage of flif. And that Chrome is proprietary. Its going to need to be relicensed LGPL to be included.

> The GPL is compatible with BSD, MPL, and MIT licenses that Firefox / Chromium use.

Yes, it is compatible, the other way around. You can take BSD, MPL, MIT code and adopt it into a GPL project, not the other way around.

EDIT: Even LGPL won't work here as it will prevent use on Windows Phone, iOS and Android.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#135

Post by zokier »

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…

It has nothing to do with requirement of code sharing. It's all about realism. So far there has been 0 successful file formats/codecs with GPL reference implementation and there is no reason to except FLIF to buck the trend. So its a huge shame that the effort now goes to waste because of avoidable political reasons.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#137

Post by scott_s »

ekianjo wrote: post #93
lt wrote: post #6

This is really interesting! There seems to be some additional technical information here: https://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18485-free-lossless-ima... - for interlacing it uses a generalization of PNG's Adam7; unlike PNG, the geometry of the 2D interlacing is exploited heavily to get better pixel estimation, which means the overhead of interlacing is small (vs simple scanline encoding, which has the benefit of loc…

I posted the news of this new file format weeks ago on HN, no one picked it up :P

What makes it to, and stays on, the front page of HN has a large element of randomness.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#138

Post by xiphmont »

digi_owl wrote: post #42
rwinn wrote: post #19

Wow! Higher compression than any other format, full transparency support, progressive/partial loading AND animations?! I can't wait for this to get widespread adoption! Github repo here btw: https://github.com/jonsneyers/FLIF

GPLv3 will be a hard sell...

Yes, but let's give this a little time. If this was going to be another example of 'the code is the spec' it wouldn't go far anyway. That's a n00b mistake, and I don't think these guys are n00bs.

If this is worth using (and it's the first thing in several years that made me sit up and say 'ooOOoo') it won't get lost. There will be a way for the world to use it.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#139

Post by zokier »

skrause wrote: post #80
emergentcypher wrote: post #65

Why all the hate for GPLv3?

If you want to your code to always be free, GPL is a good choice. If your want your code to be used by everyone, including e.g. all large browsers, you really need a permissive license. Just imagine if SQLite was GPL-only, barely anybody would use it.

> Just imagine if SQLite was GPL-only, barely anybody would use it.

Better example would be libpng

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#140

Post by anon1385 »

skrause wrote: post #91
pmelendez wrote: post #33

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

You can't link proprietary software with GPL libraries, only with LGPL libraries. For but Apple it's not even a licensing concern. Apple doesn't have a problem with the GPLv2, but doesn't touch the GPLv3 because of the patent clauses that it contains. The bash in OS X is a version from 2007 because that's the last GPLv2 version of bash. But Apple has no problem including git because that's also GPLv2 and not v3.

>Apple doesn't have a problem with the GPLv2, but doesn't touch the GPLv3 because of the patent clauses that it contains

It's not the patent clauses that are the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8868994

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