Webcam's

[Jeff Kinz]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 09:57:22AM -0400, Kenneth E. Lussier wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I'm looking for a cheap (under $100) webcam that is well supported under
> Linux (and will work on an SMP system). I had been messing around with a
> QuickCam Pro 4000, but the guy that was writing the (non-GPL) driver
> shut down his site. Any suggestions or horror stories?
> 
> TIA,
> Kenny

"nemosoft" has stopped doing the support for phillips chipset based
webcams(aka "pwc|pwcx") due to the the removal of the "Binary only driver
in the kernel" hook being removed from the USB portion of the kernel
tree </Over simplification> 

But don't panic.  Yesterday one of the contributors 
to the pwc/pwcx drivers has signed up to be the maintainer of that
package.  The binary only portion of the driver is alleged to be 
an "uncompressor" which expands the compressed video data coming
from the camera.  This portion will be made into a userspace program
that can be accessed by the driver when the camera is being used.

This change will allow the pwc/pwcx drivers to be used and supported 
without having to load a "closed source binary" into the kernel
(A violation of Linus stated policy of no "Binary only drivers"
in the kernel).

Any errors in the above are strictly the fault of this author.

("Things change quickly, I may already be wrong.")

-- 
Linux/Open Source.  Now all your base belongs to you, for free.
============================================================
Idealism:  "Realism applied over a longer time period"

Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.