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FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

flif.info

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Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#4

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Seems really cool. It seems that the biggest gatekeepers for image formats are Apple and Google because of iPhone/Safari and Android/Chrome.

Basically, if you want to be able to easily view the image on a mobile device or on the web, the format needs their blessing.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#6

Post by Latty »

The section "Works on any kind of image" is really misleading, as it mentions JPEG as a lossy format (alongside JPEG 2000) then says "FLIF beats anything else in all categories."

It really needs a giant caveat saying "lossless". I mean, that's still great and impressive, but it clearly doesn't erase the need for a user to switch formats as a lossless format is still not suitable for end users a lot of the time.

(It does have a lossy mode, detailed on another page, but they clearly show it doesn't have the same advantage over other formats there.)

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#7

Post by floatingatoll »

ronyfadel wrote: post #5

Before Apple/Google/Mozilla adopt in their browsers, I doubt this will get any traction.

With the reference encoder licensed under LGPLv3, I doubt any browser team will be able to incorporate this work into their product. They would need to do a full clean room reimplementation simply to study it (since GPLv3 seems unacceptable to them, and LGPLv3 can’t coexist with GPLv2, and so forth and so on). It’s really unfortunate that the FLIF team chose such a restrictive license :(

EDIT: Their reference JS polyfill implementation is LGPLv3 as well, which may further harm adoption.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#8

Post by taneq »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Seems really cool. It seems that the biggest gatekeepers for image formats are Apple and Google because of iPhone/Safari and Android/Chrome. Basically, if you want to be able to easily view the image on a mobile device or on the web, the format needs their blessing.

They have a demo using a prototype browser polyfill so you could arguably use it right now at the cost of slightly higher CPU usage. Depending on your data connection it could even end up using less battery on mobile due to reduced radio usage.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#9

Post by [deleted] »

floatingatoll wrote: post #7
ronyfadel wrote: post #5

Before Apple/Google/Mozilla adopt in their browsers, I doubt this will get any traction.

With the reference encoder licensed under LGPLv3, I doubt any browser team will be able to incorporate this work into their product. They would need to do a full clean room reimplementation simply to study it (since GPLv3 seems unacceptable to them, and LGPLv3 can’t coexist with GPLv2, and so forth and so on). It’s really unfortunate that the FLIF team chose such a restrictive license :( EDIT: Their reference JS poly…

[deleted]
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