Whats with the petty Open Source Pureness that has killed PWCX

[Andy Green]

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On Sunday 29 August 2004 10:23, Aaron Gaudio wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 22:00 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> > > FWIW, it would mean (at least) one less fedora devel guinea pig.

> > And the sad reality is, lots of people use these drivers and almost all
> > of them post about bugs in X or at the kernel level with these drivers
> > loaded.

> Yeah, I can understand the frustration at this. I agree that if
> someone's having a problem with an binary-only driver, their only
> recourse is the provider of that driver.

One should also note that the act of signing the NDA put the author in this 
bad spot from the get-go.  He can't really please both "masters" at that 
point.

The membrane between "you must GPL your stuff" and "keep your source" is thin 
at the kernel modules.  I can imagine why backdoor hooks to let Philips "off 
the hook" were considered evil since widespread use of them would allow the 
GPLness fo the kernel to be completely worked around.

Anyway, if someone else takes over maintainership they will be free to reverse 
the binary portion and solve the problem that way.  If not, time for a new 
webcam.

- -Andy

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