Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc)

Craig Milo Rogers
2004-08-27T09:48:23Z

On 04.08.27, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 05:03:42PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Of course if some new maintainer shows up and decides to infer how the
> > device worked by looking at the original open-source code, that's also
> > clearly fine.
> >
> > I don't want people to play lawyer. Honoring peoples rights to the code
> > they write is more important than just the law.
>
> Umm, just because he's piised off we shouldn't removed support for hardware.
> it's not like the driver suddenly stops from working because it's unmaintained.

Bit rot does occur in unmaintained Linux kernel drivers; I
believe I've seen it happen. More immediately, though, is that the
driver suddenly stops working (in effect) for new users who can no
acquire a copy of the proprietary codec module, pwcx. Without pcwx,
my brand new Logitech Web cameras are likely to be seriously crippled.
I didn't get a copy of pcwx before the website that distributed it
shut off access.

I'm seriously considering offering Nemosoft money for a
licence for pwcx. Of course, I'd need seperate copies for x86 and
x86_64 architectures... Economic rationality rears its ugly head:
the overhead costs might be too high.

Craig Milo Rogers