The ongoing Philips webcam driver saga [LWN.net]

The ongoing Philips webcam driver saga

Posted May 27, 2005 21:12 UTC (Fri) by clump (subscriber, #27801)
Parent article: The ongoing Philips webcam driver saga

This issue is very sad to me. I do not want assign blame to any party, however I really can't see anything wrong with Greg KH removing a proprietary, single-use hook. That, of course, was the reason Nemosoft was so unhappy.

From: http://lwn.net/Articles/134703/ regarding PWCX:

Anyway, I'll inform my contacts at Philips tomorrow. I don't know how they will react; maybe they'll go nuts, maybe they'll let it pass quitely; it's hard to tell.

This attitude is what concerns me. The original author need not have behaved this way, and by his own reasoning regarding his NDA could have worked with Philips to make the hook unnecessary. If what he later said about not being able to disclose his work is true, he still likely would have been the most influential person to speak and free the code from Philips. I am glad that Alan was able to talk to Philips. Hopefully something good will come of it.