An OpenGL 4.1 Gallium3D State Tracker Was Just Proposed

[dopehouse]

At first, it's a project. I really hope to have something interresting done during the summer, but I cannot say for sure that I will succeed to make a complete Open GL 4.1 + OpenCL + OpenGL ES 2 state tracker in three months .

I believe in you and that you can make this. Go for it.

[V!NCENT]

Let's also remind ourselves that getting sued out of existence isn't in any way fighting a law. Protesting against a law in mass is effective. Being downtrodden outside of the wider public eye accomplishes nothing. And the common man doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to patents or other "IP" laws. He's not going to get behind protesting on your behalf if you get sued for patent infringement. You'll get a small handful of uber-nerd geeks sending a handful of emails and that'd be the extent of the support you're going to get.

The trick is of cource to play it right. Windows users rarely know that stuff like codec installation is even needed, yet they blame Linux for being so difficult. What people call "installing Windows" is actualyt closer to what they call "installing Linux". The difference is that they don't complain about Windows due to their own ignorance, which is the 'man' that doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, yes.

My point to all of this is that there should be a very simple end-to-end-all thing that needs to be done to get all the good stuff, like a codec pack for Windows that you can just download, which is carefully hosted somewhere else (like in Russia or the north pole who cares?).

Belgium might kick ass and the government is so holy undecisive ATM (they can't actualy even form as it stands), which paves way for a nice development spot. Google is also a very nice host for "Screw our interests over and we'll sue you too death for the next billion years or so and the sue your dead corpse".

[VinzC]

I agree. I will in some days try to begin a "proof-of-concept" (but I hope it will be useful for the final state tracker, if any). I want to experiment with the context creation and the GLSL-compiler. It will already take me a fair amount of time to do that, but I will be able to see if it is possible.

Hello Denis.

Regardless of what's said or not, despite the fact that some might think it'll take too much time, I'd say go for it if you feel it! The work you'll have done won't need to be done again at least. I'm totally ignorant of all the technical aspects you'll have to deal with but if you've got faith in your project, don't hesitate .

It'll be a nice proof of concept as far as I've understood. If you can invest some of your energy in such a project, IMHO, the results you will get will doubtlessly be appreciated and worthwhile. Such energy is always an asset for the community.

[V!NCENT]

Hello Denis.

[...]

Such energy is always an asset for the community.

Too right! Go Dennis!

[HokTar]

Dear Dennis,

Although I'm anything but an expert on the technical details I think the other devs suggested you three different topics:
1) Remove as many IRs as possible (Mesa & TGSI)
2) Implement as many closedGL extensions as possible
3) Finish Clover, the OpenCL state tracker

I think the benefit of these would be that they will be immediately useful for the whole community.
Furthermore, at least the first two are necessary for your original idea.

So my 2 cents:
Pick one of these and you will get help and acceptance from both the devs and Google. You will have a pleasant summer and the community will gain a _lot_.
Then if you still feel like it go for the original plan, you might apply next year too (I'm not sure about the rules, though, but you can always try the Endless Vacation of Code from FDO).

You might want to consider this summer as laying down the necessary infrastructure for your state tracker.


Of course I'm not here to tell you what to do and I'll support with all I've got regardless of your actual topic. But you know, it's always easy to be clever when you are an outsider.

I wish the best of luck for you!

[gzed]

What I find irritating is people that say shit like this without much clue about what they are talking about.

Saying shit like 'Oh Software patents are a USA only problem' is ignorance of the Nth degree. It's just a stupid wrong thing to say.

What makes it worse is a lot of these people are from Europe, who you would think would actually now more about their own laws then USA ones... unfortunately most of them seem that they do not.

You're the one who's talking shit!

The European Union has a directive from 1991 that states that software patents are illegal in the community.

There are lobbies (mostly fueled by American corps) that tried to change this by giving birth to the EPO (European Patent Office) and registering patents, but they can't enforce them, since they're illegal here. The EPO is useless.

*end of story*

[drag]

You're the one who's talking shit!

The European Union has a directive from 1991 that states that software patents are illegal in the community.

There are lobbies (mostly fueled by American corps) that tried to change this by giving birth to the EPO (European Patent Office) and registering patents, but they can't enforce them, since they're illegal here. The EPO is useless.

*end of story*

Yeah?

You better tell that to MPEG-LA group. Who have been successfully suing then extracting licensing fees from corporations based out of Germany for patent infringement.

http://www.design-reuse.com/news/14797/german-court-finds-dvd-disc-manufacturer-ods-infringes-mpeg-2-patents.html

Unless you don't consider Germany part of Europe.

What the EPO believes, recommends, or not is completely irrelevant to anything I am saying.

Most of the countries of Europe, even France (who courts have even gone out of their way to say that software patents are invalid), there is some threat. Not at the same level of USA, but it still exists. Why? Because your definition of software patents and their definition of software patents are not the same.

Even in the USA the '100% pure software' patent is invalid. Nobody can issue a patent in the USA that is just about software. If you ever bothered to look at all the patents you'd notice that all of them describe a situation were the software interacts with hardware or the real world in some manner. They all describe in what manner some sort of device is required. In Europe most of the countries has some sort of 'technical character' or some such requirement that the patent has to meet in order to be valid. If a patent meets those standards then can be valid. Whether or not it involves software is only of minor relevance. It's much harder to do software patents in Europe, but many still apply. Especially when it comes to things like software drivers that are closely integrated into hardware.

And don't think that your leaders actually give a shit. They only resist because USA patent law is designed to favor major American corporations. Once the Europeans work out their version of software patents that favors European companies more then American you can bet that they will push very hard for them.

[not.sure]

Can't the argument be made that by purchasing a modern GPU one also acquires a license to use these algorithms on the hardware and in software? And that would include any driver or graphics stack?

[Remco]

Google is also a very nice host for "Screw our interests over and we'll sue you too death for the next billion years or so and the sue your dead corpse".

This is important.

Bring S3TC and floating point textures into WebGL 2.0, and Google will go to town on these patents.

[Veerappan]

Can't the argument be made that by purchasing a modern GPU one also acquires a license to use these algorithms on the hardware and in software? And that would include any driver or graphics stack?

No, unfortunately. The license that you are given when you buy the hardware only applies to the hardware, and the drivers directly provided by the hardware manufacturer. The license does not transfer to third-party graphics stacks. I believe that this has been covered in a few of the recent discussions about patented features in Mesa.