[Mesa-dev] Mesa & Mozilla regarding S3TC patent problem

[thibaut bethune]

Thank you all for your kind answers

Here is the corresponding bug report :
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=774134

The patent issue has been briefly discussed there...

Thibaut

2012/8/29 Tapani Pälli <tapani.palli at intel.com>:
> Hello;
>
> On 08/29/2012 12:30 AM, Kenneth Graunke wrote:
>> On 08/28/2012 10:56 AM, thibaut bethune wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> About the "the potential legal problem" regarding S3TC implementation
>>> pointed, for instance, by Ian Romanick in Bug 24207 [1] , has anyone
>>> noticed that Firefox 15 will support the WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc
>>> extension [2] ?
>>>
>>> Does anyone know what is Mozilla's position regarding this situation ?
>>>
>>> Thanks !
>>>
>>> Thibaut, 35', France
>>>
>>> [1 ] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24207
>>> [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Firefox_15_for_developers
>>
>> As far as I know, WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc simply exposes the S3TC
>> functionality already present in the underlying OpenGL drivers to web
>> apps.  I don't think they can reasonably support it unless the GL
>> drivers support S3TC.
>
> Also the spec draft does not mention compression but only 'format
> support' (decompression), for me it seems like
> 'WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc' is a composition of
> EXT_texture_compression_dxt1 and ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt. This
> might not help with the patent problem though (like dxt1 spec states).
>
> http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/extensions/WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc/
>
>
>> The hardware and GL drivers, which actually implement the S3TC support,
>> need an appropriate patent license.  Mozilla should not need a patent
>> license: it's simply an application using S3TC (and there are tons of
>> those), not implementing the texture compression algorithms.
>>
>> So this does not really affect the patent situation in any way.
>>
>> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice.  This is
>> purely my understanding.
>
> -"-
>
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>>
>
>
> --
>
> // Tapani
>
>