Whats with the petty Open Source Pureness that has killed PWCX
Bruno Wolff III
bruno at wolff.to
Tue Aug 31 18:29:43 UTC 2004
On Sun, Aug 29, 2004 at 10:40:53 +0100,
Andy Green <fedora at warmcat.com> wrote:
>
> 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 NDA appears to have expired over a year ago.
> 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.
The discussion of the binary has been misleading as well. It isn't primarily
a decompressor, but rather an interpolator. The ccd is 120x160 pixels
and the binary part interperolates to return 480x640 pixels. I think it
is pretty questionable that that function should be done in kernel space.
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