[anigbrowl]

That's one argument, but I favor an even simpler one:

GIF is short for 'Graphic Interchange Format.' 'Graphic' has a hard G sound. If it were an acronym for 'Giraffe Interchange Format' then I would probably feel more favorable to the idea of pronouncing it as 'Jif', but it isn't and I don't.

Bob Berry is undoubtedly a great software engineer, but that doesn't mean his linguistic opinions have any worth. He doesn't get to redefine linguistic norms on the basis of his coding endeavors.