Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc)

Martin J. Bligh
2004-08-27T19:12:31Z

>> But Greg is right - we don't keep hooks that are there purely for binary
>> drivers. If somebody wants a binary driver, it had better be a whole
>> independent thing - and it won't be distributed with the kernel.
>
> If you read Nemosoft's final driver release (which has been
> reposted, and of which I now have a copy), you can see that he was
> rewriting his code to move the proprietary codecs out of the kernel
> entirely, and into user-mode libraries to be linked with consenting
> applications -- he was quite sensitive to the kernel issues involved.
> Of course, this is still nowhere as good as a wholly open source
> solution, a position with which I think Nemosoft concurs, based on his
> messages.
>
> Linus, would you adress a moot issue, please? If Nemosoft (or
> someone else) were to release some of the codecs in question as one or
> more open-source loadable kernel modules (similar to sound card
> support modules in the ALSA system), while other codecs remain
> binary-only loadable kernel modules (distributed outside the kernel,
> but using the same hook as the open-source loadable modules), would
> the pwc driver and codec extension hook be allowable, in your opinion,
> please?

If he was moving the binary stuff out of kernel space into userspace,
do we even need that at all? Once the binary part is out of the kernel,
presumably there's no problem any more ... and we could just stick the
remains of the driver back in, with no magic hooks any more ...

M.