41 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
In the Belly of the Beast
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<p>In the beautiful-irony department, I have just learned that my name<br />
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and copyright now appears in the EULA (End-User License Agreement) of<br />
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a Microsoft product. A vector-graphics editor called “Microsoft<br />
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Expressions”, apparently — thanks to Martin Dawson for the<br />
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tip.</p>
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<p><center><img src='graphics/eric-in-eula.png'/></center></p>
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<p>The history behind this is that GIFLIB is open-source software for<br />
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hacking GIF images — the direct ancestor of libungif, which is<br />
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the name under which the codebase is more widely known these days.<br />
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The original software was by Gershon Elber for DOS; around 1987 I<br />
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ported it to Unix, cleaned up the architecture, added numerous new<br />
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features, and wrote documentation. When Unisys started to jump salty<br />
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about the GIF patents in the mid-1990s, I handed the project off to a<br />
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maintainer outside U.S. jurisdiction, Toshio Kuratomi.</p>
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<p>I have no idea why the copyright on this EULA is dated 1997, I<br />
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think that is a couple of years after I passed the baton to Toshio<br />
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Kuratomi.</p>
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<p>Subsequently I did a lot of work on libpng, implementing 6 of the<br />
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14 chunk types in the PNG standard and designing a new more<br />
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object-oriented interface for that library. So if you use open-source<br />
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software that handles either of the two most popular raster-image<br />
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formats, it is rather likely that you rely on my code every day. Yes,<br />
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that includes all you Firefox and Netscape and Konq and Safari users<br />
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out there.</p>
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<p>And now, my code is in a Microsoft product. This may not be the<br />
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first time; in fact, thinking about all the other places it would<br />
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have been silly for Microsoft to pass up using libpng and giflib,<br />
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it probably isn’t even the dozenth time.</p>
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<p>I’m OK with this, actually. I write my code for anyone to use, and<br />
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‘anyone’ includes evil megacorporate monopolists pretty much by<br />
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definition. I wouldn’t change those terms retroactively if I could,<br />
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because I think empowering <em>everyone</em> is a far more powerful<br />
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statement than empowering only those I agree with. By doing so, I<br />
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express my confidence that my ideas will win even when my opponents<br />
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get the benefit of my code.</p>
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<p>Besides…now, when Microsoft claims open source is inferior or not<br />
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innovative enough or dangerous to incorporate in your products or<br />
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whatever the FUD is this week, I get to laugh and point. Hypocrites.<br />
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Losers. You have refuted yourselves.</p>
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