Patches Published For Merging S3TC Library Into Mesa

[smitty3268]

grantek, I think your reasoning here is flawed. From what I've been able to gather, patent licenses for end users are usually implied rather than explicit. I don't know the details of how an implied license is scoped, but it seems like the safe assumption would be that it's a narrow license that only covers use of the product.

Right. Consider this:

I buy something - lets say it's a commercial washing machine.

Then i build my own, copying the patented stuff that i had bought.

I claim it's fine to do this, because by buying the machine i got a license to use that patent.

That's obviously not how the patent systems works, it's just harder to figure out how it would apply to software. But I think the same applies - you have a license to use the patents in the particular driver that comes with the product, but creating your own clone which also uses the patent would not be possible.

[chrisr]

Actually, I'm not very happy of the compile switch solution instead of external dlopen() libs, as it makes way more difficult for external repos to add support for patented features...

Agreed. Instead of adding a small shared object into /usr/lib or /usr/lib64, I'd suddenly need to recompile Mesa everywhere.

Gee, thanks.

[BenderRodriguez]

Won't it still be possible to compile/build that module alone? Like compile mesa without s3tc and then compile just the module?

If yes then i don't see it becoming complicated, it gets easier as you are sure that the s3tc module will compile against your mesa

[FireBurn]

I like the idea of one big switch for those of us outside the US

This should be part of the S3TC should be part of mesa not a separate library - also for those complaining about compiling - are you doing the compiling or will you be getting the package from RPMFusion / PPA?

I always find it bazaar at the sheer number of folk on these forums that bitch and complain about development changes that only effect developers.Using xorg edgers doesn't make you a dev just to make clear. Developers do these changes to make their lives easier, the easier their lives are the more developing they can get done. Which is a win win for us.

[BenderRodriguez]

I like the idea of one big switch for those of us outside the US

This should be part of the S3TC should be part of mesa not a separate library - also for those complaining about compiling - are you doing the compiling or will you be getting the package from RPMFusion / PPA?

I always find it bazaar at the sheer number of folk on these forums that bitch and complain about development changes that only effect developers.Using xorg edgers doesn't make you a dev just to make clear. Developers do these changes to make their lives easier, the easier their lives are the more developing they can get done. Which is a win win for us.

Actually i am doing the compiling Gentoo makes it mandatory

[Qaridarium]

there is some rumoring that mark shuttleworth will buy the floading point hdr+s3tc patent to bring freedome to the os driver world.

[FireBurn]

Actually i am doing the compiling Gentoo makes it mandatory

I'm a Gentoo user too :-P

Based on the number of seconds the S3TC library takes to compile this decision really won't effect us very much at all

[Mickabouille]

Is it time to restart the "non-us" repositories for debian ?

[BenderRodriguez]

I'm a Gentoo user too :-P

Based on the number of seconds the S3TC library takes to compile this decision really won't effect us very much at all

Oh yeah, the configure part of installing s3tc takes longer than the compiling itself

[»John«]

Is it time to restart the "non-us" repositories for debian ?

Hell yeah! And it would be even better if the distro installers automatically enabled/disabled that repository and installed relevant packages (marked as recommended by related standard packages) according to chosen locale so that users outside the reach of existing patent totalities could get complete multimedia support right out of the box.