On Monday 15 July 2002 21:10, Stephen J Baker wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Brian Paul wrote:
> > Vertex programming is in the latest Mesa code (I implemented
> > GL_NV_vertex program over the winter/spring). It'll be available
> > to all DRI drivers when the DRI gets Mesa 4.1.
> >
> > NVIDIA gave me permission to implement the extension in software only.
> > But since that time, NVIDIA has announced basically unrestricted
> > permission to implement GL_NV_vertex_program. I'll have to talk to
> > them again someday regarding future DRI hardware implementations.
>
> But that's the thing - nVidia granted permission for the ARB to
> integrate the NV_vertex_program as an ARB extension - then MS stepped
> in and said that they owned (?some of?) the IP for vertex programs -
> and possibly for fragment programs too.
>
> The general assumption is that they got this in the bundle of IP
> rights that SGI sold them - but I havn't seen confirmation of that.
>
> It's possible that systems like Fuche's Pixel-Planes (University
> of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Comp. Sci. department) represents
> prior art here - but I wonder whether there is anyone with deep
> enough pockets to fight Microsoft's lawyers on that basis.
>
> http://www.cs.unc.edu/~pxfl/
>
> Pixel Planes-2 certainly implemented 'fragment' programmability
> as early as 1980 - but I'm not clear on whether they ever had
> something like vertex programs.
Do you think that Pixar's RenderMan (RIB language), BMRT, etc could be seen in
the same sense? Prior art?
Who could fight against them?
Regards,
Dieter
--
Dieter Nützel
Graduate Student, Computer Science
University of Hamburg
Department of Computer Science
@home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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