Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:55:41 -0700 | | From | Craig Milo Rogers <> | | Subject | Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc) |
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On 04.08.27, Linus Torvalds wrote: > But Greg is right - we don't keep hooks that are there purely for binary > drivers. If somebody wants a binary driver, it had better be a whole > independent thing - and it won't be distributed with the kernel.
If you read Nemosoft's final driver release (which has been reposted, and of which I now have a copy), you can see that he was rewriting his code to move the proprietary codecs out of the kernel entirely, and into user-mode libraries to be linked with consenting applications -- he was quite sensitive to the kernel issues involved. Of course, this is still nowhere as good as a wholly open source solution, a position with which I think Nemosoft concurs, based on his messages.
Linus, would you adress a moot issue, please? If Nemosoft (or someone else) were to release some of the codecs in question as one or more open-source loadable kernel modules (similar to sound card support modules in the ALSA system), while other codecs remain binary-only loadable kernel modules (distributed outside the kernel, but using the same hook as the open-source loadable modules), would the pwc driver and codec extension hook be allowable, in your opinion, please?
Craig Milo Rogers - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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