On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Daniel Vogel wrote:
>
> FWIW, for the longest time SiS (now XGI) didn't have S3TC support for their
> Xabre Windows OpenGL drivers though supported it via DirectX/Direct3D. I
> guess they didn't feel like licensing the patent from a competitor.
Interesting.
> I believe exposing the GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc and
> GL_ARB_texture_compression extensions implies the driver to handle S3TC
> compression as an application can pass in uncompressed data, ask the driver
> to compress it and then retrieve the compressed data.
Sure. But do apps actually _do_ that?
If the issue is to just make gamers happy, who cares what people _could_
do? And if it means that the code doesn't need to do something that might
be patented, that's the right thing to do.
I would not be surprised if the SiS issue was exactly that: the hardware
was licensed, but not the software that allowed people to just ask the
driver to do the compression for them.
But I'm obviously not a lawyer. I do know that a lot of countries don't
allow software patents anyway, and that it would be silly for the DRI
project to not allow or encourage people in Europe to have their own
patches.
Linus
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