[Mesa-dev] Merge floating to master

[Matt Turner]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Lucas Stach <dev at lynxeye.de> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 02.03.2011, 08:22 +0100 schrieb Lucas Stach:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I want to bring up a an issue discussed some time ago. The support for
>> floating point textures and rendertargets currently lives in a branch
>> maintained by Marek Olšák. It's nice to see Marek rebases this branch
>> from time to time, to bring it up to date, but I don't think this should
>> be a permanent state.
>>
>> We need to discuss how we want to deal with patented features. I doubt
>> floating point support will be the last patented feature in the OpenGL
>> evolution.
>>
>> I think the best way to go is to merge floating to master but only
>> expose the extensions in question if the user specifies something like
>> --enable-patented at compile time. From a lawyers sight it shouldn't
>> make a difference since currently the code for patented features like
>> s3tc and floating point support is laying around on the same public git
>> servers as mesa.
>>
>> Merging this code into master should make it easier to maintain and I
>> see no legal problem if we let it up to the user whether to use this
>> code or compile his mesa without any patented features.
>>
>> --Lucas
>
> This matter won't go away if we ignore it. We will never get full OpenGL
> 3.0+ compliance if we don't merge in the floating branch.
>
> Attached you will find a patch against Marek's floating branch to hide
> the patented extensions behind a configure switch. Please ACK if you
> think we could merge in floating or give some opinion why you think we
> couldn't merge.
>
> Thanks,
> -- Lucas

This approach seemed to work for just fine for FreeType.

It was also pointed out to me recently that including this code could
actually be beneficial for the patent holder, since consumers of the
patented code may end up acquiring a license.

Matt