A Possible Workaround For The S3TC Patent Situation

[divVerent]

I currently had no contact to the mesa devs yet.

[oibaf]

Another simpler solution would be to add a Mesa specific extension for S3TC decompression only, as I suggested some years ago: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24207

[divVerent]

And then wait for 5 years till commercial games for Linux start actually checking for it?

The idea is otherwise not bad.

[oibaf]

And then wait for 5 years till commercial games for Linux start actually checking for it?

The idea is otherwise not bad.

I think that open source games + wine games (both could support it quite fast) will cover 90%+ of the market.

[divVerent]

Still, that suggestion was shot down by the mesa devs mainly for lack of support for software fallbacks, from what I see.

With S2TC, software fallbacks would work - although at lower quality, if fed S3TC compressed input. Probably still acceptable for most users - if they accept the fallback at all.

[oibaf]

Xonotic could still implement the hack to force S3TC decompression when using mesa even if S3TC extension is not available, like 0 A.D. do: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/CompressedTextures

Obliviously only if it provides precompressed textures.

[divVerent]

Forcing such an option enabled is certainly bad style and I would not recommend anyone to do that.

However, Xonotic itself already comes with a S3TC fallback - one I wrote that predates S2TC. It decompresses each of the 4x4 blocks into ONE pixel, by just averaging the two color values and ignoring the pixel data. The rationale is that the affected chipset likely can't handle the full resolution well anyway due to being low on VRAM (or not having any at all, and always using system RAM). This assumption is true for Intel chipsets, and anything DRI - except the more modern DRI supported Radeon cards, and Nouveau - for both of which, non-free but "properly" S3TC supporting drivers are available too.

[droidhacker]

No that is not how patents work, you can only loose patents by having them invalidated by a court, and that cannot happen due to you letting others use the patent without litigating.

What you are thinking about it copyright law, if you don't protect your copyright you loose it.

Yes but it was filed in 1997 which is the date from which the 20 years should be added so it will expire in 2017.

Patents and copyright are essentially the same thing. If you have a history of NOT protecting your patents, then the courts will be less likely to enforce your patents when you finally do attempt to do so.

[pingufunkybeat]

You don't lose copyright unless it expires, what on Earth are you two on about?

[droidhacker]

You don't lose copyright unless it expires, what on Earth are you two on about?

I'm not sure what he was talking about, but I'm only talking about the court's willingness to enforce IP rights, whether they be through copyright or patent (which really boil down to very similar concepts -- "this information belongs to me"). If you have a history of not being interested in enforcing your IP and then suddenly want to enforce it, but only against a single violator, then there is this question of why. Courts are run by humans, and REALLY like precedent... so if you set a precedent of allowing your IP rights to slide, the court will be less likely to side with you when you finally do want to enforce it... especially if it is just in one specific instance.