Free Lossless Image Format • Hacker News Board

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#291

Post by snuxoll » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:01 PM UTC

awalton wrote: post #284

snuxoll wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

bzzt . LGPL code is everywhere in Android and iOS. There are numerous apps built on GStreamer for both platforms, which is LGPL. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft pulled the pig-headed move though.

> LGPL code is everywhere in Android and iOS.

You're not going to find LGPLv2.1 or LGPLv3 anywhere in them, however. Starting with LGPLv2.1 you are required to allow the end-user to replace a compiled binary you provided of the LPGL'ed component with their own, something that obviously cannot be guaranteed on any of the mobile platforms I listed.

I suppose I should have clarified the version, but it's important to note that the FSF has tried to pull the tivoization card with more than just v3 of their licenses.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#292

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:06 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #92

rplnt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great. A lot of "responsive" sites nowadays use only one image as well, the highest resolution available. So you are downloading that 4K jpeg whether you are on mobile or on a desktop.

Progressive JPEG has supported this for decades. Anyone over 25 should remember them from dial-up years.

And then there was magic of watching interlaced GIFs download before the era of JREG.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#293

Post by jmspring » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:21 PM UTC

Ignoring patents is a concern.

The patent issue is a major one and not lightly ignored. I haven't checked patent status, but one of the things that was pretty contentious with JPEG 2000 during the ISO standardization process was patents around arithmetic coding -- not just the method for doing the encoding, but also things like context based modeling.

In reality, the majority of image compression comes about in the "modeling" stage -- be it predictive coding, context based encoding coefficients, etc.

I'm happy to see new advances in image coding, but having spent many years working with Glen Langdon and others, the depth of IP concerns is still fairly fresh in my memory.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#294

Post by lcswi » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:26 PM UTC

tfinniga wrote: post #112

This is an exciting development. I think the concerns about the licensing are a bit premature - honestly, this is currently a research project, not a practical replacement for existing image formats. The licensing is only one of several impediments to adoption. - The format has no spec - The format may change, rendering all previous images unreadable - The format has no javascript implementation, and no way of runnin…

Screw software patents!

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#295

Post by georgemcbay » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:39 PM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #289

binarycrusader wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're of course free to choose whatever license you believe is appropriate for your project, but I can almost guarantee that your project will not see widespread adoption if GPL or copyleft licensing is the only available implementation. Game development projects, in particular, will avoid it, as will almost anything that wants to publish an application to the Apple App Store or Google Play. You may wish to consider…

Please read the comments you reply to: "Once the format is finalized, the next logical step would be to make a library version of it, which will be most probably get licensed under the LGPL v3+"

LGPL is only marginally better (at least as it concerns perceptions, if not reality), especially when you factor in app platforms where shared libraries aren't commonly used.

Basically anything copyleft is going to have a really big dropoff in use compared to say BSD, MIT or Apache 2.0.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#296

Post by scott_s » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 11:41 PM UTC

agwa wrote: post #290

jonsneyers wrote: post #232

To clarify: at the moment FLIF is licensed under the GPL v3+. Once the format is finalized, the next logical step would be to make a library version of it, which will be most probably get licensed under the LGPL v3+, or maybe something even more permissive. There is not much point in doing that when the format is not yet stable. It's not because FLIF is GPL v3+ now, that we can't add more permissive licenses later. A…

> It's not because FLIF is GPL v3+ now, that we can't add more permissive licenses later. That's only guaranteed if you obtain copyright assignment from any contributors now . Otherwise, re-licensing will be a massive headache as you'll need to track down all the copyright holders for permission. Some might refuse or have have dropped off the map.

Right now, N=2. As of 9 hours ago, it was N=1. I think he's okay at the moment. https://github.com/jonsneyers/FLIF/commits/master

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#297

Post by binarycrusader » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 12:19 AM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #289

binarycrusader wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're of course free to choose whatever license you believe is appropriate for your project, but I can almost guarantee that your project will not see widespread adoption if GPL or copyleft licensing is the only available implementation. Game development projects, in particular, will avoid it, as will almost anything that wants to publish an application to the Apple App Store or Google Play. You may wish to consider…

Please read the comments you reply to: "Once the format is finalized, the next logical step would be to make a library version of it, which will be most probably get licensed under the LGPL v3+"

I did, hence why I referred to "copyleft".

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#298

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 12:21 AM UTC

GPLv3 will make adoption problematic... if it were at least LGPL so that it could be used as a library that would make adoption far more likely.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#299

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 12:39 AM UTC

scottmp10 wrote: post #227

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.

That's effectively LGPL.. even then, though it would still be problematic for embedding and hold back adoption in browsers and various platforms (game engines, etc).

Realistically a basic rendering and conversion implementation should be at least Apache 2, or something even more permissive (MIT/BSD/ISC). It was my first thought/comment when I saw the GPLv3 notice... They should switch the license quickly if they want to see adoption/support. Getting a free standard in place is more important than using a copyleft license.

Re: Free Lossless Image Format

#300

Post by yoklov » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 12:44 AM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #289

binarycrusader wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're of course free to choose whatever license you believe is appropriate for your project, but I can almost guarantee that your project will not see widespread adoption if GPL or copyleft licensing is the only available implementation. Game development projects, in particular, will avoid it, as will almost anything that wants to publish an application to the Apple App Store or Google Play. You may wish to consider…

Please read the comments you reply to: "Once the format is finalized, the next logical step would be to make a library version of it, which will be most probably get licensed under the LGPL v3+"

You can't use LGPL libraries in the iOS App Store. (Well, I'm no lawyer but that was what I've been told in the past)