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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