[Mesa-dev] Another Take on the S3TC issue

[Ian Romanick]

On 08/13/2013 01:42 PM, Roland Mainz wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Ian Romanick <idr at freedesktop.org> wrote:
>> On 08/13/2013 01:27 PM, Roland Mainz wrote:
>>> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 10:20 PM, Ian Romanick <idr at freedesktop.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 08/13/2013 11:53 AM, Uwe Schmidt wrote:
> [snip]
>>>> Until S3 grants it's IP to OIN or the patents expire, this is going to be
>>>> the situation.  We've been through this mental exercise of the last 5
>>>> years
>>>> more times than I can count, and we always come back to the same place.
>>>
>>> Please don't hit me with a stick if this has been asked
>>> |powl(INT64_MAX, INT64_MAX)| times... but... erm... adding the code
>>> (sample implementation, "... do not use without a license from S3 and
>>> the ritual scarification of at least one software engineer...") but
>>> having it off in the default build won't work... right ?
>>
>> That is more difficult for end-users than the current situation.  In the
>> current situation, your distro can build Mesa (no S3TC), and, if you live in
>> a country without software patents, you can just "drop in" the libtxc_dxtn
>> library to get compression.  Putting it in Mesa, along with making the
>> distros really uncomfortable, would mean you'd have to rebuild Mesa.
>
> Sounds reasonable for me...
>
>> Did I mention that we've been through this mental exercise a few times?
>
> Erm... I'm wondering... why does the S3TC issue come up every few
> months out of it's grave and haunt the list (and your nerves) ?

I didn't bring it up.  Don't ask me! :)

> ----
>
> Bye,
> Roland