On Mon, Aug 08, 2011 at 05:49:09AM -0700, Jose Fonseca wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > > The suggestion however is to include a S2TC-like method with Mesa, to > > basically > > make sure that in the long run NO distro has no support for S3TC > > uploading, > > without requiring an extra decision in each distro. > > I wouldn't oppose bundling S2TC for software renderers, but enabling S3TC > decompression on hardware is an orthogonal matter, which depends on the > licensing terms between the IHV and S3. > > If you wanna fix this, convince IHVs to fully license the S3TC use in their > hardware for Linux. So far the only IHV that _seems_ to have such wide > cross-OS license is NVIDIA. > > I think it would be good to add a FAQ about this in the docs. But I'm done > with this stupid thread. I'll enjoy my vacation and stop wasting time with > this nonsense.
In other words: you want the EXISTING support in Mesa to upload S3TC compressed textures (pre-compressed, not runtime compressed) to the hardware removed. It is the driconf option "Enable S3TC texture compression even if software support is not available" ("force_s3tc_enable" in the configuration file or environment). There is already existing games that use this method to silently enable precompressed texture even when no libtxc_dxtn library is available: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/575 So effectively, Mesa already does this. If you were right with your opinion, this would mean Mesa is ALREADY violating the patent, because any game can set that environment variable and thus TRANSPARENTLY use S3TC, without the user being aware that the patented technology is being used. And then I would ask how it is any MORE illegal if a distro bundles the S2TC lib, and thus S3TC upload is available WITHOUT setting force_s3tc_enable. Summarizing: in the EXISTING code, it's already possible for any application to enable S3TC decompression. Just enable force_s3tc_enable before initializing OpenGL. So it is available, just by a "different API" than the one in the OpenGL extension spec (due to an extra putenv() call being required). Including S2TC, and thus enabling compressed texture upload by default, only changes the API by which this functionality is enabled to the standard OpenGL one (without the putenv() call). Best regards, Rudolf Polzer _______________________________________________ mesa-dev mailing list mesa-dev@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/mesa-dev