Talk:Switching default texture format to DDS
devel list quotes: yay or nay ?
been in touch with Thorsten about the quotes I started adding before anybody got involved in the article, and working towards summarizing the main points to see if things can be cleaned up a bit. However, this might be one of the few cases, where having a bunch of quotes could actually be a good thing, opinions ? --Hooray (talk) 12:44, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- In this case I think it is a very good idea to use quotes here as many people can be "passionately opinionated" about things like these. It might be very important for the reader to have a good idea of who said what. I even took a look at the devel list at sourceforge, but I have to say that the quotes are easier to follow. While I am at it, thank you for putting the quotes in different section depending on content.
- ok, I used bigstones' Instant-Cquotes script to replace those quotes with proper cquotes now - even though Gijs is right, the formatting is still not quite right, I guess we need to update the script eventually to remove redundant stuff like all those <br/> tags. Also, some quotes should probably be re-arranged and shuffled around, like you say: having proper sections is a good idea and helps navigating all those quotes, so we could add a few more sections and re-arrange things accordingly. And like you said, the legalities were already raised 2.5 years ago on the devel list, but for some reason people tend to forget such things ...--Hooray (talk) 01:48, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
Using patented algorithms
I assume there are plugins for example for GIMP out there and perhaps also specialized tools for creating the textures, but something I have not got a clear answer to when searching the web briefly is how one would legally create the compressed textures if the compression algorithms 
are patented. Unfortunately, at this point it does not seem possible.
This is a bit of a pickle for me. While we have been firm about using non-free resources (though unfortunately some seem to not be). I would say that using patented algorithms without the permission of the patent holder (or his representatives) would be just as bad as doing complete airport layouts using aerial footage form Google maps, or using sound captured from non-free movies in aircraft (or using FlightGear with a stolen joystick...). Note the distinct difference between being published and being free for use.
Browsing a bit more it seems that while there is support for these formats as OpenGL extensions, they still have to be licensed in order to use them. While I am not a lawyer and me be a bit confused, have a look at the section "IP Status" in http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/EXT/texture_compression_s3tc.txt and at https://www.khronos.org/files/ip-disclosures/opengl/S3_IP_Cert_NOV_2011_clean.pdf (The Khronos Group is the not for profit industry consortium that have written and published latest versions OpenGL specification).
I have also seen this note about using these compression algorithms with Mesa:
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S3TC support has been partially implemented in Mesa. We cannot integrate and enable S3TC code by default due to the patents on the algorithm.
... Please be aware of the patent law in your own country with respect to using this code, as it is illegal in many places without a proper license from the patent holder.— freedesktop.org – dri/S3TC. Published by freedesktop.org. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
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Based on this I would say that we do not make DDS textures default. In fact they should probably not have been added in the first place. :-(
Sorry if I am a party-pooper...
—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 01:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
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I am not going to discuss the patent stuff. Please search the mesa-dev archives for the discussion and see there why they think that the nvidia tools and — Mathias Fröhlich (2012-01-15). Re: [Flightgear-devel] DDS texures (Was: Improving random trees &.
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