On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Ian Romanick wrote: > I am not a lawyer. None of what follows is legal advice. Furthermore, > I am speaking for myself alone, NOT my employer. > > Adam K Kirchhoff wrote: > > On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Ian Romanick wrote: > >>Adam K Kirchhoff wrote: > >> > >>>Now that there are patches available to support S3TC compressed textures > >>>on Radeon cards, are there any plans to integrate those patches into the > >>>DRI source tree? > >> > >>Until an agreement can be reached between the open-source community and > >>the patent holder, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN! STOP ASKING!!! > > > > Why are you YELLING?!!! It's an easy question that A) I've never heard > > asked, and B) I've never heard a definative answer (just speculation that > > pops up every few months, last time before the patches were even > > available). There's no reason to cop an attitude. Just politely answer: > > "Due to the legal implications, it's not going to happen at the moment." > > See how simple that is? > > Please forgive my frustration. I was yelling because apparently Allen > Akin, Mike Harris, Brian, myself, and others saying that it's not going > to happen for *years* in a normal tone of voice hasn't sunk into > people's heads. At this point I'm strongly considering marking any > message with the text "S3TC" in it as spam. > > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104993712407263&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104983843411445&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104982146721455&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104981082705861&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104979949127559&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104427973828003&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=104032667532589&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=103264830309986&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=103236369425011&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=98056163703227&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=98035135807986&w=2 > http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&m=97941445129143&w=2
Thanks for the list. You'll notice, however, that nowhere was it said by a representative of the DRI project that S3TC support (even of uploading precompressed textures) would never make it into the codebase till the legal issues were resolved. > Note that the earliest of these messages is from September of 2000. > That's over *3* years ago! > > This has also been discussed to death at the weekly IRC meetings. > > http://dri.sourceforge.net/IRC-logs/ One of the first hits for "Direct Rendering" and S3TC on google is: http://dri.sourceforge.net/faq.phtml There is no answer to the question: "Will the DRI ever get S3TC or could FXT1 be made to work in it's place?" However, if you're now saying that a decision *has* been made, I would highly recommend the FAQ be updated to show this. > > If it will never happen this should be noted *prominently* on the DRI > > website in big bold letters. Otherwise, when it becomes common knowledge > > that their are patches available and that they aren't being applied to the > > code base, you can expect a whole hell of a lot more people asking this > > very simple question, and we wouldn't want to upset you any more than you > > already are. > > My company has fairly strict policies about what sort of "policy" > declarations like that employees can make for projects that we don't > host. Otherwise, I can assure you I would have put that on the DRI main > page ages ago. > > > And then you shouldn't be surprised when peole stop using the open source > > DRI drivers in favor of closed source drivers. > > Right...the only cards that are supported by open-source and > close-source drivers are R200-family chips on x86. Be my guest. Don't > blame the distros or the open-source developers for not wanting to put > their necks on the line and risk potentially years of legal woe for > something as *trivial* as texture compression. We can live without > S3TC. Games may not run as fast, but there are plenty of other areas in > the R200 driver that can be optimized without risking any legal wrath. > > If *you* want to start your own CVS repository or distribute driver > binaries with patent encumbered technology, knock yourself out. I > strongly suspect that none of the people here that have anything to lose > are going to take on that risk. You're still assuming that it'd be a patent violation to allow the hardware to handle precompressed textures. I'd just as soon wait till Alan speaks with, and hears back from, the lawyers that he was going to talk to this about. Adam ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
