Re: [linux-usb-devel] Re: pwc+pwcx is not illegal

[Randy.Dunlap]

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 16:42:24 +0100 Alan Cox wrote:

| On Sul, 2004-08-29 at 17:33, Nemosoft Unv. wrote:
| > That's one of the reasons I requested PWC to be removed. For me, it's also a 
| > matter of quality: what good is a half-baked driver in the kernel when you 
| > need to patch it first to get it working fully again? I don't want my name 
| > attached to that.
| 
| It works very well for some users without that code. The raw pass
| through for the compressed bitstreams solved the problems for the rest.
| You appear to be seeking to hurt your userbase for your own ends. Thats
| not pleasant behaviour.  I can more than understand
| "take my name off it, make it clear its nothing to do with me".
| 
| > > Its also trivial to move the decompressor to user space 
| > > where it should be anyway. 
| > 
| > *sigh* As I have been saying a 100 times before, it is illogical, cumbersome 
| > for both users and developers, and will probably take a very long time to 
| > adopt (notwithstanding V4L2 [*]). 
| 
| Video4linux has -always- specified decompressors in user space. This was
| pointed out ages ago. V4L2 rationalised it even more clearly.
| 
| > *IF* there was a commonly accepted video "middle-layer", this would not pose 
| > much of a problem. But there is no such thing yet.
| > 
| > (maybe that's something for a 2.7 kernel...)
| 
| No its for userspace. Just add it to the relevant video frameworks.
| 
| > Seriously, this probably would not have happened if, back in 2001, the 
| > driver was rejected on the basis of this hook (you were there, Alan...) I 
| > never made a secret of it, it has been in the driver from day 1 and its 
| > purpose was clearly spelled out. If it had been rejected, I would probably 
| > have just switched to '3rd party module' mode and maintained it outside the 
| > kernel indefinetely. I would not have liked it, but it would have been 
| > acceptable.
| 
| Back in 2001 I was saying that this was broken and it belonged in user
| space.

Yes, that's right, and it should be done by now...
We kept expecting updates in that direction.

| > of thing in the kernel. However, since we're a bit late to react, we'll 
| > leave it in the 2.4 and 2.6 series, but versions beyond that (2.7-devel, 
| > etc) will not have PWC included in this form. In the mean time, we're 
| > asking you to think of a solution". Chances are the situation would have 
| > been fully resolved before that (and I mean fully *hint*).
| 
| There isn't a plan to have a 2.7 development tree but to do gradual
| development until something major comes up. That makes the suggestion
| rather more tricky - as does the legal question.


--
~Randy
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