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

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  • #21
    Originally posted by treba View Post

    Well, many of these patents do AFAIK only apply in the US as it has a very liberal, in my view somewhat out of control, patent law. I don't think this patent was valid in the EU, Japan or China. So in future trade agreements (which will probably cover patent-issues as well) , we should totally lobby for a saner approach to what is actually patentable and what not.
    Well if I look at the EU today, i see problematic politics too. The new unified copyright laws for the EU are one example (Uploadfilters, that can't be smart enough to detect legal use like quotations or satire (There are indeed hard written exceptions like for wikipedia); links to (news) sites must be paid for by the site owner etc.), so the EU could break many keystones of the internet.

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    • #22
      Patents are a violation of property rights. They are other people using the gun of the state to threaten you not to use your own mind, your own body or your own property (eg your computer) how you see fit.

      Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that patents are property (or intellectual property, as they are often called). Patents are anti-property. As long as patent law exists, your freedom to innovate, act and use your property how you wish, will be curtailed.

      Property (real property) came about as a way of dealing with scarce resources. e.g. if only one fish has been caught from the river, but there are 50 people in the village nearby the river, who should have the right to decide what happens to that fish? Under a system of property rights, we'd say that the person who caught the fish has the right to decide what happens to it.

      Ideas and patterns are not scarce. If someone comes up with a good idea (eg how to redesign a fishing rod to make it more efficient), that idea can be copied by the other 49 people in a village at near-zero cost. They can speak that idea to one another or even just observe the idea with their senses. Those other villagers can then adjust their property (their physical fishing rods) to improve them as per this new idea. Patents are a means to try and make that idea of how to improve the rod scarce. It is a means to slow down progress and give benefit to 1 at the expensive of the many.

      Please reject all patent laws. Patents are a very bad idea. When you have a good idea, there are plenty of methods of monetizing it which do not require state-violence (or threats of) to be inflicted on your fellow man.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by boxie View Post
        I am sure that they have their place
        you are wrong
        there is a whole book explaining how you are wrong
        http://www.fraw.org.uk/library/foss/...evine_2008.pdf

        Last edited by pal666; 18 June 2018, 07:42 AM.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by euler271 View Post
          well, patents were devised for the purpose of doing exactly the opposite of what they do now.
          patents were devised for granting monopoly on mining of salt and the like. you could also benefit from reading book linked above

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          • #25
            Originally posted by nanonyme View Post
            You can't really keep things trade secrets in software industry unless you keep it locked up in an inaccessible server. Everything gets reverse engineered sooner or later
            that means you have to keep innovating to always be ahead of competition. isn't that what any sane civilization wants ?

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            • #26
              Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
              Why should algorithms be not patentable?
              because math is not patentable
              Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
              removing patents at all would mean that everything would become a closely-guarded trade secret, which is much worse for innovation.
              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
              Last edited by pal666; 18 June 2018, 07:56 AM.

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              • #27
                Originally posted by cl333r View Post
                Then how did Vulkan work up until now in Mesa drivers? I'm sure it's also got floating point textures, no?
                mesa is non-conforming driver, even if fp textures were required by vulkan

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by kpedersen View Post
                  Could Khronos / OpenGL / Vulkan protect itself from this in future? Something in the license stating that extensions to OpenGL cannot be patent-able.
                  slightly other way around "you have to provide free patents for stuff you propose", some standard bodies do that

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
                    The issue is the lenght of the patent, 20 years is an eternity, still less insane bs than copyright that is like a century, but removing patents at all would mean that everything would become a closely-guarded trade secret, which is much worse for innovation.
                    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. Patents are a permanent block.

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                    • #30
                      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?

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