Page 164 - 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

It was also purely coincidental that the modular toolbox type of JPEG design was perfect for open source
implementations (for the IJG, it was enough first to build those components that were felt most essential for
their target applications), and the RF nature of the standard helped to avoid any licensing troubles with
possible patent holders. Open source advocates are very often individuals with no or little information and
communications technology (ICT) company background.

With Tom Lane, the author had the following email exchange, 4 August 2018:
“a) Was JPEG-8-R the first JPEG specification and when was it picked up by the IJG? And when?
As far as I can tell from digging around in old email, we obtained paper copies of JPEG-8-R8 from
the X3 Secretariat in November or December 1990, which is more or less when the group started
working.
b) The first IJG Code of September 1991 corresponded to which JPEG-8-R specification?
We had copies of JPEG-9-R6 by February 1991, and that would have probably been what we were
working from for "v1", though I found some mail questioning whether 9-R6 was actually any more
authoritative than 8-R8. (BTW, my files show IJG's "v1" public release as being dated 7 October
1991.)

c) When did IJG implement the finally approved JPEG standard (which was approved by CCITT in
1992 first and which was quite close to the earlier JPEG-8 last version)?

I do not recall that we had to make any standards-compliance changes after the v1 release,
although we gradually implemented larger fractions of the spec (12-bit depth came later, I think,
and progressive mode was definitely much later). But this was a lot of years ago, so I might've
forgotten something.

d) Who was your main contact in the JPEG team? I just remember reports about the progress of IJG,
but I cannot remember who presented that (maybe it was Greg Wallace the JPEG Chairman at that time)?

I was in touch with Greg from about May of 1991. I also seem to have been in contact with William
Pennebaker from Jan 1991, though I don't have any actual emails to/from him till much later
(maybe the early contacts were by phone? or I'm just looking in the wrong archive?). It looks like
Greg was by far the most helpful, though. I don't recall talking to any other committee members
besides them and Joan Mitchell; and most of my interactions with Joan were later, when she was
working on the pink book.
e) Particularly interesting was the implementation of the arithmetic coder, that was included in one
version (which one?), but then taken out in the next version (which one?).
It was already gone in v1. I do have a “tarball” (sort of ZIP) of a prototype from May 3 1991 that
appears to have a non-stub arith.c file in it.”
It should be added that the IJG chose a sort of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) OSS licence (from the IJG
software version jpeg-6b) for its code:
------------------------------------
“This software is copyright (C) 1991-1998, Thomas G. Lane.

All Rights Reserved except as specified below.
Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
software (or portions thereof) for any purpose, without fee, subject to
these conditions:
(1) If any part of the source code for this software is distributed, then
this README file must be included, with this copyright and no-warranty
notice unaltered; and any additions, deletions, or changes to the original
files must be clearly indicated in accompanying documentation.
(2) If only executable code is distributed, then the accompanying

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