Also there is to consider a non technical aspect, whether vendors will
misuse this interface for binary only, undermining the efforts put in
for OSS drivers.
What holds companies for using the current available code putting it
into an rpm or deb package and releasing such code now?
The Avermedia example I pointed out to is a good example already.
As from my side I won't release binary drivers.
Although on the other side:
* are drivers from vendors which work through several kernel versions
that bad?
* Why did someone duallicense videodev2 with BSD/GPL?
I would appreciate if someone else on the list could also comment
the reason that drivers should all be included in the linuxkernel just
because forcing the companies to release binary drivers because
of that. My opinion about that is if a company wants to go opensource
they will do so, if not they will either not release a driver or release
nothing.
I know for certain that adding a userland API tuner/demod interface to
the kernel, allowing non-caring opportunistic silicon or board vendors
to developer closed source proprietary drivers, will have a negative
effect on the community and we'd set back linuxtv 3-5 years.
I know for certain that it would happen. Trust me.
I've told you this countless times and you're not hearing me.
Hauppauge have some leverage with Conexant and NXP to release public
datasheets. If they just have to release a demod.so (or similar)
loadable, they'll defer to the board vendors and we'll see the certain
board vendors 'locking other board vendors' out of their drivers. We'll
see embedded firmware, not shared between drivers.
Except, it won't stop at demod.so. It will extend into unfixable bugs
for VendorB's board, because VendorA doesn't want to release a new
demod.so, and VendorB has no linux resources. What happens next? For
financial reasons - demod.so will begin to include checks to see if
specific PCI or USB devices are present in the system, and will fail to
work properly (if at all) when they're not being used with the preferred
products.
Read my lips: For commercial reasons, this enables driver components
that only work if specific boards are present.
- Steve
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