[humorix] New Image Format: GNU/GNU

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

New Image Format: GNU/GNU
August 30, 1999

BOSTON, MA -- "Choosy hackers don't choose .GIF."  That's
the slogan behind Richard M. Stallman's new campaign to
replace freedom-subtracted .GIF files with a new
patent-free "GNU/GNU" image format.  The GNU/GNU format
(GNU's Not Unisys) neatly solves the patent problem while
introducing a vastly improved graphics format.

Unlike other formats containing a binary stream of data,
GNU/GNU is a human-readable XML file.  This design was
chosen by the GNU Project after some preliminary research
revealed that 98.3% of all images on the Web fit into one
of these categories:

* Pornography
* Animated advertising banners
* "Under Construction!", "Email Me!" or other useless icons
  hosted on free webpage providers such as GeoCities
* "Powered by Linux" buttons (RMS is quick to point out
  that these should say "Powered by GNU/Linux")
* "Best Experienced with Internet Explorer" warning images
* Bill Gatus of Borg pictures

Using the GNU/GNU format, a porn image, for example, might
contain such tags as "chestsize", "skincolor", "pose", and
"facialexpression". Web browsers will render this image on
the fly, eliminating the need to download a huge bitmap
that takes two minutes to fetch. If this format becomes
widely accepted, total Internet bandwidth usage may fall as
much as 59% according to one analyst.

To show off the new format, RMS posted to Usenet earlier
today a GNU/GNU file (named patents-suck.gnu.gnu) that
contains the text "no gifs due to patent problems" in a 45
point sans serif font along with an image of the GNU gnu
mascot.  The size of the file? Only 231 bytes!  (That
doesn't count the 10KB copy of the GNU GPL that was
embedded in the file's header).

GNU/GNU support should be available for The GIMP and
Mozilla within the next month.  The upper management of
Unisys Corp. was unavailable for comment at press time.

---

James S. Baughn
http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/


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