Ask HN: Why can't computers copy GIFs at OS level?

[OmarShehata]

If you copy/paste an image at the OS level, if it's a gif, it gets converted to a still image/only the last frame is taken.

This seems like it should be fairly simple to solve. Is it unsolved because no one has tried, or is there some big legacy reason why this is actually really difficult?

[rep_movsd]

Copy and paste are handled by applications and the OS shell Any program is free to define the formats it is willing to copy or paste - like mime types.

Software sucks, not because its bad, but because people wont implement things