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    SubjectRe: pwc+pwcx is not illegal
    Date
    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...
    >
    > -
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