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S3TC Is Still Problematic For Mesa Developers, Users

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  • Kivada
    replied
    Originally posted by tomato View Post
    VIA is still making processors
    When is the last time you say any of their products for sale let alone anyone say they own one? The last time they where even semi interesting was when Nvidia was showing netops at CES with the ION2 chipset being powered by the dual core version of the VIA Nano, a combo that never saw the light of day as an actual product.

    Since then AMD and Intel's low end CPU and GPU systems blew them out of the water for the same money spent giving nobody a reason to buy VIA/S3.

    Leave a comment:


  • ChrisXY
    replied
    Originally posted by nightmarex View Post
    we did pay for the hardware already.
    Why only hardware? With this hardware there comes a driver free of cost that includes s3tc support. Usually even on a CD.

    Leave a comment:


  • nightmarex
    replied
    Originally posted by tomato View Post
    it could have been argued, that since the only way for S3TC to be useful, it needs to be supported in hardware, and all the hardware out there supports it, so you've already paid the licensing fee...

    But to actually argue that, you'll need few lawyers and few million dollars in change.

    The real world solution is to paraphrase Linus: "Fuck You VIA" and "Fuck You US legal system"
    Hey, the laws in the US are just fine, as long as you ignore them and never get caught! I have to agree with your point, we did pay for the hardware already. Oh wait we don't actually own things we buy anymore, I forgot.

    Originally posted by Soul_keeper View Post
    I get the feeling that if s3tc support was just integrated into mesa and shipped with distros HTC/S3 wouldn't care, but we would(the foss community).

    Have we seen any indication otherwise ?
    Are they willing to change the license or forfeit it ? Is anyone petitioning them directly for this ?

    Why no public statements or emails/QA from the horse's mouth ?

    Here's another idea:
    find out how much they'd sell the patent for, then make a kickstarter project with the intent on purchasing it and open sourcing it.

    Well, some distros (ones not based in the US) already include S3TC others make it super easy to add. I feel this is sort of a non issue if all you have to do is click a warning box from you distro saying you care less about the idiotic patent laws.

    Leave a comment:


  • -jK-
    replied
    How are ASTC or ETC1/2 replacements for S3TC?
    • ETC is implemented in software for all desktop drivers atm (and it is very unlikely MESA impl. them in hw before the blob ones do)
    • ASTC isn't exposed yet by any drivers as I know (nor is it known how many gpus are able to do it in hw)

    So is the future of MESA really to uncompress all current & future texture formats and to not support a single hw accel. compressed texture format?

    My view of the future:
    • ASTC is too complicated, so there won't be many compression libs (see M$'s BC6/7). Neither will there be much driver/hw support. So it won't ever get popular.
    • ETC could easily gain popularity (better quality than S3TC), if it would be supported by drivers, but I don't see that in the (near) future

    So it still isn't the fault of the engine/content devs that S3TC is preferred.

    Leave a comment:


  • jakubo
    replied
    Originally posted by Soul_keeper View Post
    I get the feeling that if s3tc support was just integrated into mesa and shipped with distros HTC/S3 wouldn't care, but we would(the foss community).

    Have we seen any indication otherwise ?
    Are they willing to change the license or forfeit it ? Is anyone petitioning them directly for this ?

    Why no public statements or emails/QA from the horse's mouth ?

    Here's another idea:
    find out how much they'd sell the patent for, then make a kickstarter project with the intent on purchasing it and open sourcing it.
    as far as i know ubuntu ships with s2tc, and arch has s3tc by default. If i was them, i wouldnt make a statement saying yes if that could mean that my other patents could be questioned because of it. so maybe its just safer to stay with uncertainty, knowing that the opponent would have to go all-in to call.

    Leave a comment:


  • doom_Oo7
    replied
    Originally posted by Soul_keeper View Post
    find out how much they'd sell the patent for, then make a kickstarter project with the intent on purchasing it and open sourcing it.

    So you'd have to buy both the game and the technologies behind the game ? Why not also ask people to get a commercial license of the UDK, UniGine, and other game engine for every game they buy that uses those techs ?

    Leave a comment:


  • Soul_keeper
    replied
    I get the feeling that if s3tc support was just integrated into mesa and shipped with distros HTC/S3 wouldn't care, but we would(the foss community).

    Have we seen any indication otherwise ?
    Are they willing to change the license or forfeit it ? Is anyone petitioning them directly for this ?

    Why no public statements or emails/QA from the horse's mouth ?

    Here's another idea:
    find out how much they'd sell the patent for, then make a kickstarter project with the intent on purchasing it and open sourcing it.
    Last edited by Soul_keeper; 14 August 2013, 04:12 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • hal2k1
    replied
    Originally posted by Phoronix article
    Until S3 grants it's IP to OIN or the patents expire, this is going to be the situation.
    Originally posted by tarceri View Post
    Last time I read about it HTC had bought S3 for its patents as defence in the On going smartphone patent wars.
    Furthermore, HTC IS an OIN Licensee.

    HTC Corporation is listed at number 202 here: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/licensees.php

    For an OIN licensee, the OIN License Agreement says this: "OIN licensee grants license to other current and future licensees all licensee patents and applications for the Linux System"

    Ergo, surely all other current and future OIN licensees can legally use HTC's S3 patents in a Linux System.
    Last edited by hal2k1; 14 August 2013, 04:00 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • tarceri
    replied
    Originally posted by Kivada View Post
    At this point is S3TC licensing the only thing keeping VIA/S3 alive anymore?

    Sucks since it would be nice if they where still capable of being solid competition for Intel, AMD and Nvidia.
    Last time I read about it HTC had bought S3 for its patents as defence in the On going smartphone patent wars.

    Leave a comment:


  • tomato
    replied
    Originally posted by ethana2 View Post
    Ok, so my understanding is that AMD and nVidia can use S3 Texture Compression in their proprietary drivers because they've licensed the patents in question from S3, but Free Software implementations cannot, because those patents are not part of the Open Innovation Network. Would it be possible in theory for AMD, Intel, or nVidia to distribute the S3TC Mesa library as a binary under the brand of their respective drivers? That is to say, if AMD already ships support for S3TC in Catalyst, could they theoretically make a standalone "Catalyst" S3TC driver to work with the Free Software radeon drivers to implement this feature?
    it could have been argued, that since the only way for S3TC to be useful, it needs to be supported in hardware, and all the hardware out there supports it, so you've already paid the licensing fee...

    But to actually argue that, you'll need few lawyers and few million dollars in change.

    The real world solution is to paraphrase Linus: "Fuck You VIA" and "Fuck You US legal system"

    Leave a comment:

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