A friend informs me that LZW is now out of patent. Is this true? If my memory serves, the whole debacle where Unisys claimed they deserved royalties on the GIF file format (am I remembering the company right?) was based on that patent.

I seem to recall that there were a lot of things that people weren't doing because of that. Things like software programs that wouldn't work with the GIF format because people objected to proprietary implementations, or couldn't afford to pay royalties, or whatever. So are we going to see new stuff come out now that works with GIF which didn't before?

It's been over a year since it expired here in the US. See here.

Correct. The LZW algorithm is now entirely unencumbered by Unisys-owned patents. There is a question as to whether one of IBM's patents may also cover its use, but that patent also expires soon, in 2 years time IIRC, and I doubt that IBM will do anything about it anyway.

For static images there is a better solution than .gif anyway. Shame that .png doesn't do animations.

.mng

although, it isnt widely supported

No, *you're* mung.