Thunder.Net Communications Policy on GIF Images

Due to the fact that many web authors maintain pages on this site, it is difficult to verify that all the software used to generate GIF images complies with Unisys' policy regarding use of their LZW compression patent. It is not feasible to audit the origin of every GIF image file on the site. It is feasible to prohibit any new ones and migrate all existing ones to more modern image formats. Thunder.Net Communications therefore has made the following policy regarding GIF images on this site:

As of November 1, 1999, no new GIF images are allowed on any web site served by Thunder.Net Communications. PNG or JPEG are now our primary recommendations for web images.
All existing GIF images on the site are recommended to be converted to PNG or JPEG images as soon as practicable.
Thunder.Net reserves the option at any time in the future to configure the web server to respond with an error to any file with the MIME type of image/gif or a filename suffix of .gif. (Plan for it. It will eventually happen.)

For background information on the Unisys LZW patent and how it affects sites which use GIF images, see the Burn All GIFs web site.

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