Arm's ASTC Encoder Replaces Its Restrictive EULA With Apache 2.0 License

[bridgman]

As far as I can recall (it's not on their website any more) I never saw any licensing agreement, so I was never authorised to use it...

Ah yes, that would be a problem

[archsway]

Other than not being an open source license, what do you feel is wrong with that text ? IIRC that is also the text that was just removed by the commit discussed here.

As far as I can recall (it's not on their website any more) I never saw any licensing agreement, so I was never authorised to use it...

The ASTC encoder at least had a EULA:

https://github.com/ARM-software/astc-encoder/blob/28055f59cdcaf057beb441ffd52cb6414c232e04/LICENSE.md

Also, the documentation states:

The Mali OpenCL SDK v1.1.0 provides developers a framework and series of samples for developing OpenCL 1.1 application on ARM Mali based platforms such as the Mali-T600 family of GPUs.

A restrictive license for a texture encoder could make sense, but for sample code?

[bridgman]

Arm don't seem to be very good at sticking a proper license on when releasing code.

I have their old OpenCL "SDK", which has licence headers which look like this:

/*
* This confidential and proprietary software may be used only as
* authorised by a licensing agreement from ARM Limited
* (C) COPYRIGHT 2013 ARM Limited
* ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
* The entire notice above must be reproduced on all authorised
* copies and copies may only be made to the extent permitted
* by a licensing agreement from ARM Limited.
*/

Other than not being an open source license, what do you feel is wrong with that text ? IIRC that is also the text that was just removed by the commit discussed here.

[frep]

nice move, arm is with the future of graphics nonetheless.

[archsway]

Arm don't seem to be very good at sticking a proper license on when releasing code.

I have their old OpenCL "SDK", which has licence headers which look like this:

/*
 * This confidential and proprietary software may be used only as
 * authorised by a licensing agreement from ARM Limited
 *    (C) COPYRIGHT 2013 ARM Limited
 *        ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 * The entire notice above must be reproduced on all authorised
 * copies and copies may only be made to the extent permitted
 * by a licensing agreement from ARM Limited.
 */

[Remdul]

@ M@yeulC: unknown. It's not given whether the patent was granted (valid) in the first place, nor whether Arm intends to license it to 3rd parties, or if it's just a defensive patent. If anyone has the relevant USPTO number that would be helpful.
That said, by explicitly re-licensing the encoder from a very restricted (unworkable really) license to Apache 2.0 would probably significantly restrict their ability to litigate. But it all depends on the fine print of the claims in the patent of course. Historically, AFAIK most texture texture compression patents (e.g. S3TC) applied only to hardware decoding, not software encoding (unlike e.g. MP3, in which encoding was patented). This is why Arm's ASTC licensing was regarded as remarkable and unusual.

[nuetzel]

Now, if AMD can follow?

[M@yeulC]

How's the patent situation?

[microcode]

Fekkin finally. They went to all this trouble to make this excellent format, but then hobbled its adoption like this. So many years later, it's supported in a handful of places.

[Remdul]

What a pleasant surprise. I suspect Rich Geldreich had something to do with this. Nice work!
Let's hope this furthers adoption on desktops.