Page 146 - ITU Journal, ICT Discoveries, Volume 3, No. 1, June 2020 Special issue: The future of video and immersive media

ITU Journal: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 3(1), June 2020

JPEG and OSS (IJG)
CCITT
SGVIII ESPRIT-563 RAND patent policy
Requirements ISO TC 97/SC 2/WG 8 Project: Test images regime
+ Requirements and testing
Architecture

JPEG
Specification
Development
IJG
JPEG Informal IJG JPEG product RF patent policy regime
Committee OSS Code implementers
JPEG8- contacts
R8 Spec. 1991+
1990-08

CCITT ISO/IEC Running C
SGVIII JTC1/SC 29 ANSI X3 Code &
approval approval RAND patent policy
Standards are regime
compatible

ITU-T ISO/IEC
T.81 10918-1

Fig. 1 – Overview of components of JPEG-1 standardization
The draft was prepared by the JPEG Committee, whose members were ITU and ISO individual experts. The
JPEG was formally created in November 1986 in Parsippany, NJ, USA. The founding members (about 15) were
individuals, but also had formal links to ISO TC97 SC2/WG8 or the CCITT SGVIII NIC (new image
communication) group. Among them were the leaders Hiroshi Yasuda (NTT, Japan), convener of SC2/WG8
and Manfred Worlitzer (CCITT SGVIII special rapporteur), who had a substantial role in the initiation
(March 1986) and founding of JPEG. The founding members recognized that both SC2/WG8 and the CCITT
SGVIII NIC group had similar goals in the development of a still picture compression and coding standard.
Nevertheless, the JPEG:
• was a group of photographic coding experts, created on an ad hoc basis, and registered formally
nowhere as a formal entity;
• consisted of experts from ISO TC97/SC2/WG8 and (ITU) CCITT SGVIII Q.18 in their individual expert
capacities, not representing their companies – these two formal ISO and CCITT groups were the
“parents” of JPEG because they were informed about what was going on in JPEG and regular feedback to
JPEG was given;
• developed and wrote the JPEG specification (i.e. JPEG-8) that became the basis for ITU-T T.81 (1992) |
ISO/IEC 10918-1:1993 [1] and for the open source implementation by the IJG.
So, in that sense JPEG comes rather close to those informal communities that we see today on the Internet, like
jnode or Babel as part of the JavaScript standardization community, who have similar links to Ecma TC39, the
formal body responsible for ECMAScript (JavaScript) standardization.

Although TC97 SC2/WG8 and CCITT SGVIII were part of ISO and ITU, respectively, their JPEG working rules
and policies were rather different from their parent organizations. Such unique working rules and procedures
arose because in autumn 1986 no common joint working rules between ISO and CCITT yet existed. Those were
invented and implemented a few years later.

The JPEG rules and procedures included the following.
• A simple one-step approval rule based on consensus.
• A separate management structure (e.g., JPEG chair, JPEG subgroups) – the Chairmen until JPEG-1
approval in 1992 were Graham Hudson (BT Labs) and Gregory Wallace (DEC).

• Membership of individual experts and not member bodies, or ITU member states or sector members.

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