Messages in this thread | | | From | Norbert van Nobelen <> | Subject | Re: pwc+pwcx is not illegal | Date | Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:16:26 +0200 |
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Hi,
A part of this discussion has to do with the expiration of the NDA covering pwcx. Can you disclose the NDA? Also a person on the list tried to contact the correct person within Philips. Can you disclose the contact person or department which you used about 3 years ago?
Best regards,
Norbert van Nobelen
On Sunday 29 August 2004 18:33, Nemosoft Unv. wrote: > Hello, > > On Sunday 29 August 2004 16:00, Alan Cox wrote: > > On Gwe, 2004-08-27 at 20:29, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > So stop whining about it. The driver got removed because the author > > > asked for it. > > > > Please put it back, minus the hooks so the rest of the world can use it. > > No, don't! There is one very practial reason for that: the utter confusion > it will cause when suddenly PWCX cannot be loaded anymore, because users > will assume that since PWC is in the kernel, PWCX will work too. I really > would not like to be at the receiving end of the support mailbox when 2.6.9 > comes out with such a crippled version of PWC. > > That's one of the reasons I requested PWC to be removed. For me, it's also > a matter of quality: what good is a half-baked driver in the kernel when > you need to patch it first to get it working fully again? I don't want my > name attached to that. > > > If not please remove every line of code I've even written because I > > don't like the new attitude .. so ner.. > > > > Point made ? We can't go around throwing out drivers because the author > > had a tantrum. > > I'm not having a tantrum. If it is, it has been one in the making for 3 > years. > > > Its also trivial to move the decompressor to user space > > where it should be anyway. > > *sigh* As I have been saying a 100 times before, it is illogical, > cumbersome for both users and developers, and will probably take a very > long time to adopt (notwithstanding V4L2 [*]). > > I mean, I still remember when the YUV->RGB conversion code was snipped from > PWC when I supplied it for inclusing in the kernel, back in 2001. It took a > long, long time for webcam tools to adjust their code to check for the YUV > palette and do the conversion themselves, and _to_this_very_day_ I'm > getting mails about programs who still don't get it right. > > *IF* there was a commonly accepted video "middle-layer", this would not > pose much of a problem. But there is no such thing yet. > > (maybe that's something for a 2.7 kernel...) > > > Similarly the driver is useful without the binary stuff. > > True. But judging from the mails I have received the last couple of days, > people don't really care about the binary stuff, as long as it works. They > want to use the cam to its full potential, so PWCX is more or less a > necessity. However, there's has now been added an extra hurdle in getting > it work, for reasons I find questionable, and really, 3 years too late. > > Seriously, this probably would not have happened if, back in 2001, the > driver was rejected on the basis of this hook (you were there, Alan...) I > never made a secret of it, it has been in the driver from day 1 and its > purpose was clearly spelled out. If it had been rejected, I would probably > have just switched to '3rd party module' mode and maintained it outside the > kernel indefinetely. I would not have liked it, but it would have been > acceptable. > > Another acceptable solution would have been, if after the 'discovery' of > the hook, Greg or anybody else had said: "Look, we really don't want this > kind of thing in the kernel. However, since we're a bit late to react, > we'll leave it in the 2.4 and 2.6 series, but versions beyond that > (2.7-devel, etc) will not have PWC included in this form. In the mean time, > we're asking you to think of a solution". Chances are the situation would > have been fully resolved before that (and I mean fully *hint*). > > > Or do we need a -ac tree again where this time -ac is "added camera" ;) > > *lol* The code is still floating around on the Net, so nobody's stopping > you... > > - Nemosoft > > > [*] Some advice: if you really want to speed up V4L2 adoption by video > tools, start disabling V4L1 in the kernel... > > - > 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/ - 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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