Re: [Dri-users] [Mesa3d-dev] Will Mesa/DRI ever support OpenGL 3? - Patent issue

[Allen A. <ak...@ar...>]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 05:30:18PM +0100, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
| However OpenGL 3 will not work out of the box on a new Linus
| installation. It will not work on a PC that came pre-installed with Linux.

I'm not working with Khronos these days, so I'm not privy to the
discussions about including S3TC in OpenGL.  However, based on past
discussions in the ARB, I don't think we should automatically conclude
that OpenGL 3 won't work out-of-the-box.  The licensing terms will
determine what can be done.

It's possible that the license will permit royalty-free unlimited
redistribution of decompression code with Mesa, in which case we don't
have a problem.

It's possible that the license only applies to hardware implementations,
in which case Mesa isn't even involved.

So I'd recommend contacting Khronos and asking what the licensing terms
are likely to be, when they'll be finalized, and whether there's any
process to influence them (if they seem to be headed in the wrong
direction).

Allen