"Dave Martindale" wrote in message
...
John Navas writes:

MY TAKE: JPEG 2000 hasn't exactly taken the market by storm, and a new
more capable format is badly needed, so let's hope JPEG XR takes off!

One of the things that made the original JPEG format supported by just
about every imaging program under the sun was the availability of the
royalty-free JPEG library produced by the Independent JPEG Group
(basically Tom Lane). Every basement application author could just get
the code and drop it into their application and start supporting JPEG.
I don't think there were any licencing documents and certainly no
payment involved.

Can Microsoft bring itself to release something similarly unencumbered
if it's based on their own code? Or will it take someone like Tom to
produce an independent implementation before the format becomes widely
adopted?

Dave

They (Microsoft) already have given the code out freely.