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by pjsg 3388 days ago
As the author of the original libjpeg (back in 1991), I think this has been a long time coming! More power to Google.
5 comments

Thank you for giving such a present for all of us! JPEG was in my opinion really ahead of its time, is still impressive, and many of the engineering compromises between simplicity and efficiency are just brilliant.
>More power to Google.

Careful what you wish for!

Thanks so much for libjpeg. You totally rock.
Thank you for writing such beautiful software.
Impressive :)

What are you on these days ? image codecs still ?

No -- computer security -- which is a fascinating field. There are arms races here between the good people and the bad people. It isn't clear that the forces of good are winning. It is a Red Queen problem.

The original libjpeg code was written to try and change the Usenet News binary pictures groups over from GIF to JPEG (so that more images would fit down the rather narrow transatlantic pipe that I had at the time). The choice of license turned out to be a good one (it predated the GPL V2) -- who knows what would have happened if we (the precursor to the IJG) had chosen that one.

Were you already security saavy before or did you learn on the spot ? It's as exciting as scary, and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole :)

(thanks for the answer btw)