Re: CD writing in future Linux (stirring up a hornets' nest)

From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Mon Jan 30 2006 - 16:46:42 EST


Albert Cahalan wrote:

OK, this is getting silly and downright offensive. I encourage
everyone else to look over the code to see that I am right.

I may just be crazy enough to fork this project. I very nearly
did about 18 months ago. I can't very well do this alone,
because I don't have all the hardware. (It's either cdrecord
or Asterisk -- I'm not sure which one pisses me off the most)

I can test on various 2.6 kernel ATAPI CD and DVD burners, and on 2.4 kernel even a real SCSI CD burner as long as it lasts. I would love to see some mutual cooperation, but I doubt it's going to happen.

Just to be clear, Joerg is not the only one I think has been a problem here, he pissed off some of the developers who don't seem overly eager to do things which would be helpful for any burner software. From here it looks like a pissing content, with users well within splash range.

* was an RTOS developer
* day job is all about secure software
* the procps maintainer
* running Linux 2.6.xx only
* using FireWire, which is totally hot-plug

Perhaps the first thing to do would be to find a list of all the
apps that depend on cdrecord. Their interface to cdrecord
needs to be documented so that a compatibility script can
be made.

Do you plan on changing the interface, then? Removing the SCSI stuff completely? Do bear in mind that there are still SCSI burners and people using them, and cdrecord is currently portable to many operating systems.

Matthias, can you give me a hand with this? I'll need a way
to sort and publish incoming patches, letting them sit for a
while. (like what Andrew Morton does for the kernel) This
can't work like procps because the hardware varies too much.

Look a year down the road, when we have have two (or more) new 25GB optical formats coming out, probably with new features and commands and several vendors building drives for them. Both formats have DRM stuff in them, and GPL 3 forbids implementing DRM (simplification).

Better you than me, but it will be exciting. To the extent that I have the hardware I'll be glad to test.

--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@xxxxxxx)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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