Am Donnerstag, 19. Dezember 2002 16:32 schrieb Thomas Dodd: > Nicholas Leippe wrote: > >On Wednesday 18 December 2002 11:20 pm, you wrote: > >>On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 08:10:30PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > >>>You have to balance things out. Yes, the US is litiginous, and clearly > >>> way too much so. Is the answer to just cower in a hole and hope it > >>> passes? Maybe. And maybe not. > >> > >>Maybe the proper course of action would be to try to come up with a > >>workalike mechanism which doesn't infringe on the patent. For example, > >>using an approximation of the actual algorithm. I seem to recall that > >> the S3TC algorithm is basically a simple "store every corner of an NxN > >> square at full precision and store the gradients at a lower precision" > >>algorithm... > >> > >>Also, what about doing hardware-only support, and just breaking for > >>software fallback? Then it'd be up to the hardware (which ostensibly has > >> a license) to implement the algorithm. > > > >What about just implementing it as a patch hosted outside the U.S.? > >Leave the choice up to the users just like with decss. > > Bettr still. A loadable part of Mesa/ drivers. Have a simple default > module that does nothing/ returns an error if S3TC (de)compression is > requested. Then someone, out of reach of the patent, can write a version > of the module that works. A single C file should work, built against the > DRI/XF86/Mesa headers, and it replaces the default version. If at some > later date S3/VIA decide we can use it, the infastructure is there. If > needed for speed, the code could then be builtin instead of a module. > Add in the hooks for a loadable module, is simply preparing for quick > implementation when S3/VIA give the go ahead.
Couldn't this be a "general" API to get missing stuff (e.g. ATI's "Smooth Vision", "HyperZ" etc.) into the DRI? Something like to get (binary) addon modules into the tree. What do you think? -Dieter ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: Geek Gift Procrastinating? Get the perfect geek gift now! Before the Holidays pass you by. T H I N K G E E K . C O M http://www.thinkgeek.com/sf/ _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
