Linux loses the Philips webcam driver [LWN.net]

Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

Posted Aug 27, 2004 17:15 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467)
Parent article: Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

This seems quite strange. You don't need the binary driver to get the basic functions of the camera working, but you do need it for the highest resolutions. So why not just toss the proprietary compression driver and keep the basic functions?

I'd much rather have a barely-working quickcam than a useless quickcam.

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Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

Posted Aug 27, 2004 18:02 UTC (Fri) by erich (subscriber, #7127) [Link]

You do.
The current maintainer (read: author) of the driver doesn't. So he told the kernel maintainers to remove this *unmaintained* driver from the kernel.
I guess if you pick up the code - it's GPL - and resubmit it to the kernel developers promising you'll further maintain it, it will go back in.

Moving the proprietary decompression into a userspace application would of course be nice. But then someone needs to make a *secure* api for accessing it and for providing the decompressed video data back to userspace using a video4linux device (remember: you'll want to use the webcam the same way like all other webcams)

Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

Posted Aug 27, 2004 19:06 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

Jeopardy response: "What is a named pipe?"

Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

Posted Aug 27, 2004 19:28 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

That doesn't agree with Linus' statement about respecting the wishes of the
author. I some dissonance between all these statements.

It seems someone agrees

Posted Aug 31, 2004 17:05 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

From KernelTrap:

http://kerneltrap.org /node/view/3747?PHPSESSID= ec07d8bff92b1faf36bdc14451a40476

On Gwe, 2004-08-27 at 01:03, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Yes and no. From a legal standpoint you're right. However, we should also 
> be polite. If he's the sole author, and he asks for it, I think it's 
> reasonable to honor his wishes.

He is not sole author. Large parts of the code are based on other
authors work and simply copied from the standard framework. Please put
back the version without the hooks. It is useful to all sorts of people
in that form.

When the author GPL'd it he gave up his rights to remove it. Expecting
people to clean-room reverse engineer GPL source is a joke.

Alan

-----

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.
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. Its also trivial to move the decompressor to user space
where it should be anyway. Similarly the driver is useful without the
binary stuff.

Or do we need a -ac tree again where this time -ac is "added camera" ;)

Alan