Messages in this thread | | | From | "Nemosoft Unv." <> | Subject | The return of PWC | Date | Mon, 2 May 2005 02:29:35 +0200 |
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Hello Greg, Luc
I've been out of the loop for a while, but today I was informed that PWC is about to return to the main Linux kernel tree, in some form. In fact, it's already in 2.4.12rc3.
Unfortunately, the current implementation is not acceptable. First, there are still some references to the old website (http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam) en e-mail address. But that's no big deal. What's more of a problem, though, is the decompressor code that is being included.
In case you hadn't noticed, that code has been reverse compiled (I would not even call it "reverse engineered"), and is simply illegal. Maybe not in every country, but certainly in some. There are still some intellectual property rights being violated here, you know, and I'm surprised at the contempt you and Linux kernel maintainers show in this regard for a few lines of the law.
Now don't get started on "it was GPL code before you left bla bla" or "you should not have abonded the project bla bla blah" and "this court here has ruled reverse engineering is allowed and so on mumble mumble".
I abandoned the project, true. But PWC was (and is) GPL, so if somebody wanted to do the maintenance, that's fine because that is the intent, after all. Even if that person grabbed the pre-compiled binaries and started maintaining with that, that would have been borderline, but okay. But you're crossing the line here with PWCX (the decompressor). If it was truely reverse engineered, by studying the bitstream and trying to figure out the algorithms, then that would have been a remarkable feat. But how dare you decompile binary code, slap a GPL header on it and try to return it to the kernel as if everything's alright now?
Anyway, I'll inform my contacts at Philips tomorrow. I don't know how they will react; maybe they'll go nuts, maybe they'll let it pass quitely; it's hard to tell. Either way, you're putting yourself in a precarious situation here. Clearly, this code was not intended to be included in the kernel source, it has been obtained by rather dubious means and, above all, I don't think the GPL was ever intended for this kind of "relabelling". I call it theft.
So I seriously suggest you do not put the module back into the kernel in this form.
Regards,
- Nemosoft Unv. - 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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