TouchFLO 3D's Open Source bits!

[Guest PPCInformer]

What are the chances that the most hyped User Interface released by HTC utilises open source code for many functions? Well according to Johan Sanneblad, If you go to “Settings” and scroll down to “About” you will see a list of copyright notices from the various technologies used!

Over at his blog he has posted the product names, and also added brief descriptions about the products used.

• Boost. “Free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries.”
  *Open source*
• FreeImage. “An Open Source library project for developers who would like to support popular graphics image formats like PNG, BMP, JPEG, TIFF and others as needed by today’s multimedia applications.”
  *Open source*
• Lua. “Lua is a powerful, fast, light-weight, embeddable scripting language.”
  *Open source*
• Luabind. “Luabind is a library that helps you create bindings between C++ and Lua. It has the ability to expose functions and classes, written in C++, to Lua.”
  *Open source*
• Vincent 3D Rendering Library. “This project maintains a compliant implementation of the OpenGL ES 1.1 API specification for mobile devices.”
  *Open source*
• STLport. “STLport is implementation of C++ Standard Library”
  *Open source*
• RapidXml. “RapidXml is an attempt to create the fastest XML parser possible, while retaining useability, portability and reasonable W3C compatibility.”
  *Open source*
• SWIG. “SWIG is a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages (such as Lua).”
  *Open source*
• BString. “The Better String Library is an abstraction of a string data type which is superior to the C library char buffer string type, or C++’s std::string.”
  *Open source*
  

[Via: Sanneblad ]

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Nice!

Why redo work someone has already done eh? :D

P

[Guest Phil John]

So what? It's not really surprising; most software uses several (if not more) external libraries to help provide functionality. With open source ones (as long as the libs are LGPL or BSD) it makes sense to use them if possible as they're free and therefore reduce the cost passed on to the consumer.

Looks like they've used some fairly low-level libs here, 3d rendering, scripting etc., nothing there looks like it provides any of the functionality they've actually built on top of them.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Sure, still interesting tho no? It's not like *scandal* HTC uses open source! *scandal* or anything :D

P

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

I think it's also interesting as an insight as to how TF3D does things internally...

P

[Guest argh]

(as long as the libs are LGPL or BSD)

Even LGPL can get you in trouble if you're not careful with how you link (has to be a shared library/DLL). BSD, Apache and Boost licenses are good though (and probably some others).

I'm not sure if any of these projects are LGPL'd, but if they are, there should a shared library available on that device that anyone can copy and use too :D

[Guest Phil John]

Sure, still interesting tho no? It's not like *scandal* HTC uses open source! *scandal* or anything :angry:

P

Sorry! I must have read it that way :D

Even LGPL can get you in trouble if you're not careful with how you link (has to be a shared library/DLL). BSD, Apache and Boost licenses are good though (and probably some others).

I'm not sure if any of these projects are LGPL'd, but if they are, there should a shared library available on that device that anyone can copy and use too :D

Not just that, but you have to make an offer of the source (not just point to the upstream providers).

[Guest Fleabag]

I didn't realise this wasn't common knowledge... I read it on MDA Compact IV launch day, and thought I was behind the times. :D You don't really have to delve very deep.

Edited August 9, 2008 by Fleabag