A Linux Driver Project status report

Video input devices is... interesting. I'm not sure about the webcam end of things (I think
there are a lot of out-of-kernel drivers and random cheap chips in that area). For TV
hardware, though, your typical piece of hardware integrates chips from several different
manufacturers, and supporting it requires finding out not only how to use any unsupported
chips but also how the manufacturer has connected them. There are literally hundreds of
different pieces of hardware from different manufacturers, each with its own quirks. (Most of
the card-specific stuff is reverse engineered.) This is all done in the developers' spare
time.

Also, while most, perhaps even all, chips used on TV cards do have full documentation, nearly
nobody makes them public. Some companies are willing to release them under NDA, some aren't.

As for the inter-personal conflicts, the less said the better.