A Possible Workaround For The S3TC Patent Situation

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Possible Workaround For The S3TC Patent Situation

While S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) is widely used by many games and applications since its inclusion into OpenGL 1.3 and Microsoft DirectX 6.0, these lossy texture compression algorithms have not been implemented in the open-source Linux graphics drivers. This lack of open-source support is due to S3 Graphics holding the patent rights to this technology that they actively license to major hardware vendors. There long has been an external library that can be loaded and will work with most Mesa / Gallium3D drivers for advertising S3TC support, but it's not found by default and it's not included in leading Linux distributions due to these legal fears. There may now be a new solution for the S3TC Linux problem thanks to the advent of a new (and simpler) texture compression algorithm that can serve as a drop-in replacement.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=16240

[elanthis]

Very cool stuff. That would put the FOSS graphics drivers 50% closer to being usable for at least basic dev work on high-quality games.

[sabriah]

There is one straightforward solution.

Ignore the patent.

That patent is valid only locally, in the US. Not world-wide.

Make a world implementation and only then a crippled US version. This is how e.g. the .gif patents were handled.

[dajomu]

Since HTC has bought S3 and they are clearly not into suing, I agree that this patent could be ignored.

[divVerent]

Make a world implementation and only then a crippled US version. This is how e.g. the .gif patents were handled.

That is the general idea. The "world implementation" is here:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mareko/libtxc_dxtn/

However, US-based linux distributions cannot safely include that. I intentionally provide the same interface as this library, so either can work as drop-in replacement for the other.

[Drago]

Since HTC has bought S3 and they are clearly not into suing, I agree that this patent could be ignored.

And you think that, because ....?

[0laf]

Since S3TC omits key elements of the S3TC texture compression method (e.g. quantization is not done in the block encoder but within the pre-processor, no derived colors, etc), they believe -- and based upon the input of others -- that this new method is not stepping on the S3TC patent.

replace bold printed word with S2TC and this sentence actually makes sense

[spykes]

There is one straightforward solution.

Ignore the patent.

That patent is valid only locally, in the US. Not world-wide.

Make a world implementation and only then a crippled US version. This is how e.g. the .gif patents were handled.

I totally agree.
Why the rest of the world should have to suffer because of the broken US patent system ?
I don't understand why this is not a simple compilation flag for MESA drivers yet.

[[Knuckles]]

To those saying "ignore it": consider that people from the US aren't really at fault for their broken patent system and can't normally do anything about it.

It's not fair to bitch when something is US-only and "we" can't access it, and then turn around and say "fuck em" when the tables have turned.

Great work from the Xonotic developers, I hope this gets included in Mesa soon!

[dajomu]

And you think that, because ....?

Since HTC thinks that Apple should compete than sue I assume HTC would walk the talk when it comes to their patents.