2000.10.06 15:08 "RE: Tiff v7.0 spec (was: Old-style JPEG and HP 9100C Digital Sender)", by Scott Wagner

Hello all,

This list has for some time heard laments about Adobe's failure to act on Tiff v7. Adobe seems to be recognized as the "official" controlling agency - but are they really? Does Adobe have any legal (e.g. copyright or other) ownership of this specification?

If the answer is "no", then perhaps it is time to request "formal" custody of the format and its specifications (which organization monitors this - ISO?) We can certainly make a good case for transfer of custody because the current custodian (Adobe) has done nothing significant to support the format since inheriting it from Aldus.

If the answer is "yes", I can't see that Adobe owns anything other than the name and the specification - so a parallel, fully backward-compatible public-domain format specification (e.g. xIFF) is a viable option. This is the de-facto situation currently, so making it official is not a very big step.

It's time to do something to support TIFF's biggest asset - it's a widely used, non-proprietary format which supports a very diverse set of image types in an organized fashion.

/*********************************************************************
* Scott Wagner  (swagner@itek.com)      NOTICE: My personal information,
* Staff Engineer                        including my E-mail address, may
* Itek Graphix                          not be sold, distributed, or made
* Rochester, NY USA                     public without my consent.
*********************************************************************/