By Rachel Chalmers
On Friday November 5, in the spirit of Windows Refund Day, a group of protestors marched on the headquarters of Unisys Corp in Brisbane, California. Their beef: that Unisys is charging license fees for its LZW compression, a component of the GIF graphics file format which was once commonly used on the internet. GIFs created with licensed, proprietary software are not themselves subject to license fees, but Unisys is reluctant to license free software, and open source developers are not happy. We’ve got quite a little crowd here, Don Marti told ComputerWire in a phone interview from the protest site. (Chanting could be heard in the background.) He said the crowd included webmasters from some pretty important organizations, but added: Nobody here wants to have their day job named. Though the turnout had not been as large as he’d hoped, Marti felt that the protest had been a success: I’ve succeeded because webmasters have clogged my mailbox saying they’re going to use my Burn All GIFs logo and clear their sites of GIFs.
For his part, Oliver Picher, the spokesman for Unisys, estimated that about six people had turned up. He described the protest as very peaceful, and said that he’d had the chance to meet and exchange views with Marti. I think we’ve at least for the purposes of this agreed to disagree and engage in civil discourse, Picher said. He also clarified the details of the LZW license fees, which were not exactly hiked as reported. It’s very complex, because no two licenses have been exactly the same, he noted, but for example, anyone who wanted to implement a two-server web site would formerly have had to pay $1500 per year per server for the life of the patent, which expires in 2003. That comes to $15000. Unisys customers, however, told the company they wanted a single payment. Picher argues that a one- off $5000 fee for the life of the patent is relatively low compared to what it had been.
Why is free software such a sticking point? I don’t know if it’s difficult or impossible to get Unisys to license free software, Picher hedged, before going on to explain that: with free software, the potential user base is every man, woman and child on earth. Under those circumstances, we’re not comfortable granting a license. I think we would be willing if someone would be willing to compensate us. He acknowledged that compared to the company’s total revenue $7.4bn, revenue from the LZW patent is insignificant. Nevertheless, he says, the company is unwilling to let the matter slide. The example you could use is the state of tension that existed between the US and Soviet Union when they both had their nuclear arsenals. Companies like Unisys need a strong patent portfolio as a defensive mechanism… nor are we in a position to unilaterally disarm. What the software patent issue needs, apparently, is another Gorbachev.
