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Free Lossless Image Format

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Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#221

Post by nickpsecurity »

robert_foss wrote: post #165
pierrebai wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

GCC has been around for 30 years. Only in the past 5 years has LLVM been around, and LLVM really is the only compiler to ever have matched GCC. The value GCC has provided to the software community in large is immense. Do you think it would have survived this far if it had been MIT-licensed all along? To support this argument, I'd like you to think about all the other compilers that never had a 10th of the traction of…

kazinator was correct that saying one product made it proves nothing about overall effectiveness of its attributes. That's unscientific. If we're using uptake and maintenance as criteria, we might start with the venerable Sourceforge to see what percentage of projects go anywhere or get maintained under various licenses (esp GPL). Compare that to proprietary while we're at it. I predict results aren't going to look good for GPL's success rate and that's without a financial requirement.

Far as compilers, proprietary are winning out in terms of longevity, it's a select few proprietary vs GCC in terms of performance, GCC in uptake, LLVM with decent performance/uptake, and some others with intended academic uptake. So far, that's barely any GPL, one industrial BSD, quite a few academic (MIT/BSD licensed), and many proprietary. Apples to apples, GCC is barely special except in what it offers for free and how hard it is to extend. That's why LLVM was designed and why Apple built on it, among other companies and OSS-loving academics. After a mere market survey, GCC suddenly doesn't look amazing.

Now what's your thoughts on GPL getting the only development when I bring up Apache, BIND, FreeBSD, Sendmail, and so on? Plenty get development. Success stories, just like GPL, still have little to do with copyleft of the license and a lot to do with community or resources.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#223

Post by nickpsecurity »

antientropic wrote: post #111
dagw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the only complete documentation of the file format I found was the source code of the reference implementation. So the only way to write a new implementation is to study the reference implementation, which will make your new implementation "tainted".

Studying GPL'ed source code does not "taint" anything. You're absolutely allowed to do that. If you're really concerned about subconsciously copying elements of the original into your implementation, you could let somebody else study the original and write a spec.

That's what I had people do.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#224

Post by digi_owl »

logfromblammo wrote: post #182
bostonpete wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, I believe the answer is 100%. If you're using the original code as a starting point or a reference for your code, then you're basically creating a derivative work.

Correct, you have to do a clean room implementation. You either start from a public standard, or you need two separate teams. One team is allowed to look at the existing code and make a detailed description of what it does, but not write any new code, and the other team can read the descriptions from the first team and write the new code, but they can't ever look at the old code. This only works to avoid copyright in…

And that, boys and girls, is how we got the PC clones. Thanks to Compaq no less. Could not happen today though, as back then IBM could not patent the BIOS chip.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#225

Post by nickpsecurity »

alphabetam wrote: post #32

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

The code won't but the spec/format can. What you do is have a third party look at the code. They need to identify a high-level description of what it does, what inputs the format takes, what outputs it uses, the storage format, and so on. Precise enough for someone else to implement it from scratch with likely compatibility. Yet, not copying the code itself and maybe not even copying the implementation strategy. Should avoid GPL tainting.

Even if someone wants to sue over it, I'd say that legal battle is worth fighting because this is similar to how FOSS makes stuff compatible with proprietary software/protocols: reverse engineering their function to make a separate, compatible implementation. Knowing how important that is, I doubt even the zealots would sue someone using above methodology knowing it could set a precedent which might be used against them.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#226

Post by mthoms »

colanderman wrote: post #185
mthoms wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If compared to the original yes, but that's apples to oranges. They are different resolutions. It'd be more accurate to compare it to a pre-generated resizing of the original image (at the same effective resolution as the "half downloaded" FLIF).

A compressed image which does not reconstitute to the original image is by definition lossy. You can't scale a PNG down by 25% and call that "lossless compression". Though I'll gladly take your logic and call the first 1/64th of a progressive JPEG lossess (which it is, since at that point you only have the DC offsets of basic blocks, which undergo no lossy compression).

It's lossless (in theory) when compared to a 1/64th scaled version of the original image (which is what was clearly meant).

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#227

Post by scottmp10 »

spullara wrote: post #188

One of the least interesting parts of this is that it is GPL. Someone should reimplement it with a BSD license so it can be used more widely. AFAIK & IANAL, but I don't think you could integrate this with FF, Chrome, Safari or IE.

I think the right avenue is to keep the license GPL but provide a permissive as-is use license. The idea is that you want people making improvements to the algorithm to contribute those back for the public's benefit rather than charging people for their "upgraded" version. A separate unmodified-use license could be much more permissive in the use of algorithm as-is for compressing and decompressing images.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#228

Post by rbehrends »

emergentcypher wrote: post #65

Why all the hate for GPLv3?

Two primary reasons.

1. The GPL is incompatible with many other licenses, including free and open source licenses. Viral licenses do not play nice with one another. 2. For many people, the risk associated with the GPL death penalty is simply too high. Even the watered down GPLv3 version has some scary scenarios.

Aside from that, a lot of people simply aren't bothered by a proprietary fork of free or open source software with a permissive license. Keep in mind that permissive licenses or proprietary forks do not affect freedoms 0-3.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#230

Post by andrepd »

jblow wrote: post #192
spullara wrote: post #188

One of the least interesting parts of this is that it is GPL. Someone should reimplement it with a BSD license so it can be used more widely. AFAIK & IANAL, but I don't think you could integrate this with FF, Chrome, Safari or IE.

No kidding. If you want an image format to become widely adopted and standardized, GPLing the code is a pretty bad idea.

I think it's great to have a free software solution which wholly eclipses the competition. It's an incentive to use free software (use free software and get the best image codec in the world).
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