Every patent covers a range of possible methods. Some patents are so
general that it would be very hard for any variant which does the job
not to be included.
Even when we do find an alternative method which is patent-free,
sometimes that doesn't solve the practical problem--because of
incompatibility problems.
In the 80s, compress was hit by software patents (LZW algorithm), and
lost. The GNU project looked for someone to develop a free
compression program with another algorithm. Our goal was a complete
free Unix-like operating system, and that requires (among other
things) a free compression program.
The first attempt to replace compress was hit by another software
patent, one week before its planned release. So we found another
person, Jean-Loup Gailly, who wrote the program that is now gzip.
The new algorithm was significantly better than compress--not a
revolutionary advance, but enough for users to notice. gzip was
quickly adopted for distribution of compressed tar files and for
saving space on disk. However, the new algorithm has not succeeded at
replacing LZW for compressing images. The WWW is still mostly using
GIF format, which is based on LZW. PNG format, which uses the gzip
algorithm, is used only rarely.
This is why www.gnu.org does not use GIFs--to remind people that the
community needs to move away from that format. The net can still
escape from the grip of the LZW patents, if the popular browsers can
be made to support PNG.
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