OpenGL Floating Point Textures No Longer Encumbered By Patents, Enabled In Mesa

[schmidtbag]

So, what exactly will be affected by this? Will we see any improvements? If Mesa has gone this long with it being disabled, I can't imagine most/any games actually need this.

Why would they put something that is encumbered by patents in the OpenGL spec?

I came here to ask the same thing. I personally am pro-patent, but putting one on OpenGL seems so stupid and counter-productive. That's like having a public library where there's 1 particular shelf where you must pay to use a book in it, yet you still don't own it.

[trek]

Why would they put something that is encumbered by patents in the OpenGL spec?

probably because OpenGL was developed initially by Silicon Graphics
then Khronos managed the OpenGL 14 years later

[eigenlambda]

When was the last time you wanted to use a patented algorithm?

* writing gifs instead of pngs because gifs have animation
* listening to mp3s instead of oggs because mp3s are everywhere
* watching h265 instead of av1 because not yet
* encrypting data with modular exponentiation because evidently the fact that discrete logarithm is difficult is interesting enough to be worthy of a patent

who would honestly think using point numbers as themselves instead of just using the mantissa bits as an integer would be patentable? Of software that is patented, who wants to use it because it's not obvious and better, other than h265?

[caligula]

Mesa should be patent-free now. The only other known involved patent was the S3TC one, also expired recently (and S3TC was as well integrated in mesa, no more need for the external library).
GIF, MP3, MPEG2 also expired some time ago...
What's next? MPEG4?

I got the impression that S3TC expired, but conversions between formats didn't. So the textures are not 100% patent free yet.

[caligula]

When was the last time you wanted to use a patented algorithm?

* writing gifs instead of pngs because gifs have animation

Not sure what your point was, but for what it's worth, the animation part wasn't patented. GIF is hardly the only animation format out there. Both MNG and SVG are network graphics formats with animation support. Before GIF there were DIB/BMP animations, ANIM IFF and so on.. What technologies were patented seems pretty arbritrary. Sometimes the patented formats are even worse than free ones. For example GIF has a pretty lousy compression ratio compared to PNG.

[Guest]

This catch up will never end because every day, as patents expire, new stuff gets patented... Want to do font rasterization and fast curves on the GPU patent free? Just 7 more years...

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Then how did Vulkan work up until now in Mesa drivers? I'm sure it's also got floating point textures, no?

Each implementation to be patentable has to be novel and unique. I imagine the `committee' agreed upon a novel and unique non-patentable version for Vulkan.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

This catch up will never end because every day, as patents expire, new stuff gets patented... Want to do font rasterization and fast curves on the GPU patent free? Just 7 more years...

That's what happens when you're last to market and have the smallest influence over the direction of consumer preferences.

[starshipeleven]

because math is not patentable

An algorithm isn't math but logic. If you can patent a mechanical calculator why the fuck you can't patent a software calculator.

this is nothing but your bullshit fantasy, contradicting historical facts. software was not patentable in us before 1981 and most of software algorithms were invented by that time

That's entirely tangential to my point, wtf.

[starshipeleven]

Nah, I completely disagree. Trade secrets are much easier to deal with in open source as they offer you the choice of clean-room reverse engineering them.

Breaking trade secrets by any means gets you in court just as easily as patents, but the main difference is that they are not public so you don't know if what you are doing is litigable or not, this unknown risk of getting blasted in court is totally going to let innovation thrive outside of large companies that can defend themselves.

Note that in many patent litigation the main goal isn't to win but to bankrupt the (smaller) defendant to assert your company's dominance.

Patents are a permanent block.

Trade secrets are the same, with the difference that they are not public. You like walking in minefields at night?