Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] The GIF issue

[Chris Weiss]

M. R. Brown (address@hidden) wrote*:
>It sounds like classic FSF doubletalk, unfortunately.  On one hand they
>support decoding LZW GIFs in any GNU software that needs to, but they don't
>support the freedom of the *developer* to use them with that software?  Why
>include GIF support in the first place?  So if the GNU wrote (or co-opted) a
>web browser or other rendering element that supported GIFs, would they
>support decoding GIFs, but only allow the browser to go to non-GIF sites?

Not exactly.  They are boycotting the creatation of gifs, not the displaying.  
If a
project distributes a gif then that gif had to be created somewhere, and most 
likey
by the project's team.  This is what FSF is talking about.  They still leave it 
to
the user to decide whether they want to use gifs or not and are nudging users to
not use gifs but not outright preventing them.


>Does the FSF propose fixing browsers with broken PNG support?  Wouldn't
>that make a stronger statement than just a blanket ban of all GIFs?

FSF can't fix them.  Most of the broken browsers are closed source.  See
http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/ for a list of what browsers are
broken in what ways.  Sure a blanet ban would make a stronger statement, but 
it's
not the right statement.


>Alas, even if phpGW's final option was to leave Savannah in order to
>maintain the aesthetic excellence they have all this time, that wouldn't
>prevent Savannah from co-opting phpGW's source and continuting to use it.
>Just look at the SourceForge situation.  Unfortunately, if phpGW did leave,
>I doubt the FSF would put a positive spin on it, and turn it into a
>Slashdot-worthy debacle.

I think we can find a happy place without leaving the FSF.  The FSF has much to
offer and is really only asking for very little sacrafice at this point.


>Even though Savannah proudly took SourceForge's codebase and implemented
>it,

My understanding is that the majority of Savannah's backend was re-written to 
use
the phpgwapi, and from my recolection of Loic's irc chats, several improvements 
to
phpgw were contributed.

Chris