CompuServe Messages

John, We (Black Belt Systems) have already taken the first steps in contacting CIS over this. The contact given was Larry Wood, who says he is the "Point Sysop" on this matter. I emailed him, and received a reply suggesting I call, "due to the overwhelming amount of email on this matter". I can well imagine. So I called him, and we talked. I have a reasonably good grasp on what is happening at the moment, and it _appears_ that things are still in flux. If this turns out to be as nonsensical as the Compton's tiff over "multimedia" was, as I suspect it will, then probably nothing will happen in the long run. However, at the moment, there is a potential financial liability building for every copy that sells which supports GIF. As a result, the smart thing to do is simply drop support for GIF – period. And that's what we currently plan to do. There are myriad _available_ file formats that provide the "benefits" that GIF does, IFF being an excellent example… in fact, IFF is a much better format. My take on this is that if they DO attempt to do enforce this issue, the first thing that will happen is GIF will go out of use. The second thing that will happen is a huge backlash against CIS and to some extent, Unisys. Of those two, CIS is far more vulnerable. Such a backlash would be entirely justified in my view. The problem here is that GIF was made available, at no charge, without the requirement of signing ANY license agreement, in many venues, BY CIS. This makes it very hard to charge people back-royalties, perhaps impossible… certainly seems like it OUGHT to be impossible. I've already issues instructions to the technical people to remove GIF from Imagemaster R/t and WinImages products. Ben Williams President Black Belt Systems –Ben …via AutoPilot