Re: [GnomeMeeting-list] Philips camera support discontinued?

[Johnny Strom <jonny strom netikka fi>]

Conrad Beckert wrote:
> The situation is completely nuts as Philips cameras
> are the most widespread ones - at least here in
> Germany. Our big electronics retailers - Mediamarkt
> and Saturn  - have virtually only Philips cams and
> definitely not supported Logitechs etc. on stock.
>
> That excludes a lot of people from videoconferencing -
> in my opinion the most widespread webcam application.
> I have a Philips webcam too - recently upgraded so I
> couldn't justify before myself buying an other model.
>
> The problem seems philosophic - and the Kernel
> maintainers seem (at least as I can conclude from what
> I've read) behave in a fundamendalistic way. On the
> other hand, offendedly redrawing from the scene and
> locking oneself in the bathroom doesn't help either.
>
> As it is now, everyone - except the Evel Guy From
> Redmond (TM) - looses. The reputation of Linux as a
> system that provides freedom for it's users, suffers.
>
> Without getting into the discussion of free, "libre"
> ...: I used to have the freedom to have my videophone
> on Linux with my Philips cam - and now it is gone.
> This kind of things I usually attribute to closed shop
> products. (not even Windows would do that)
>
> Probably - we here in the Gnomemeeting forum - should
> find a solution. Someone (I would try - please help)
> should convince both the Kernel crowds and the driver
> developer (forgot his name, sorry) to get back to
> table.
>
> I could imagine a compromise:
> - The kernel gets both driver (pwc and pwcx) and (non
> standard) hooks back for the time beeing.
> - For the next version (2.8 or whatever) a standard,
> well documented way of including closed source drivers
> into the kernel should be developed and communicated
> well to the community. That interface should be
> generic enough to accomodate anything (perhaps it
> exists yet)
> - The pwc driver should be converted to this new
> interface standard
> - Meanwhile pwc should be available as it is.
>
> Any ideas?

Well again to not get into this situation again so should we all
try to get the pwcx code GPL'd. So anybody here knows how to contact at
Philips please give us this info now.


> Conrad
>
>
> > The kernel provides an interface where modules can
> > hook ; a quite
> > generic interface, that is used by all modules
> > (libre or not). The libre
> > pwc module creates its own hooking interface, just
> > for the non-libre
> > pwcx: there is code in a GPL module that is there to
> > enable a non-libre
> > module, and only that module.
>
>
>
> 	
>
> 	
> 		
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