Everybody hate binary kernel module: that’s clear, but sometimes that the only way to use some hardware.
This is really a bad news to all webcam users: USB kernel hackers decide to patch PWC kernel driver to avoid the use of the extended kernel module which is binary only. Check out this for more infos.
update: read this thread. Why Philips doesn’t provide spec ?
The main problem is the boneheadedness of the modul maintainer. Sorry, but he explicitely states that he won’t do his module as a kernel-external module. Even though that’s standard for many stuff that supports special hardware on linux when you can’t get full open source drivers. And his "so now I delete everything and the kitchen sink and you are all poor people because you can’t use my cool module any more, bah bah bah" is just childish.
Hopefully someone with a bigger grasp of Open Source and how to do something delicate like supporting a part-binary kernel module will jump in and take what was in older kernels and maintains it just as a out-of-kernel distributed module.
The only trouble is that this only i know, who have sign a NDA w/ philipps on the compression algorihtm. So nobody else right now, can re-write this module..
It’s a shame that the Web archive pages [1] only get you so far. Yes, it’s a silly thing to "take the ball home", but it would be nice if the Linux kernel developers focused a bit more on API stability rather than messing other developers around like this.
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20040202174433/http://www.smcc.demon.nl/webcam/
Ok this take only 2 days to have another driver for this webcams..
Check out here for more infos (in french)
Read this thread carrefully …
Philips is laying ?