On Sun, Aug 29, 2004 at 10:40:53 +0100,
Andy Green <fedora(a)warmcat.com> wrote:
One should also note that the act of signing the NDA put the author in this
bad spot from the get-go. He can't really please both "masters" at that
point.
The NDA appears to have expired over a year ago.
The membrane between "you must GPL your stuff" and
"keep your source" is thin
at the kernel modules. I can imagine why backdoor hooks to let Philips "off
the hook" were considered evil since widespread use of them would allow the
GPLness fo the kernel to be completely worked around.
Anyway, if someone else takes over maintainership they will be free to reverse
the binary portion and solve the problem that way. If not, time for a new
webcam.
The discussion of the binary has been misleading as well. It isn't primarily
a decompressor, but rather an interpolator. The ccd is 120x160 pixels
and the binary part interperolates to return 480x640 pixels. I think it
is pretty questionable that that function should be done in kernel space.