On 09/02/07, Anne Wilson <cannewilson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Friday 09 February 2007 10:06, you wrote: > > No, bitching won't help. But complaining in an organized fashion to > the developers will. > Dotan, google around pwc and pwcx drivers. The pwcx driver was built by a developer who managed to negotiate with the hardware supplier, subject to a NDA. Eventually the NDA timed out, but he still refused to make public the contents of the NDA, saying that if we want hardware suppliers to cooperate we need their goodwill. Personally, I think he was right. The linux community hassled him so much that he gave up. The kernel developers took the hook out of the kernel because they said it was not used generically. They did it without warning to him. He had cause to feel aggrieved. I can personally vouch for the fact that it was a good driver - better than anything I'm seeing here, and this was about 3 years ago. The current pwc driver is lousy. You hit the real problem when you commented that no-one knows how many linux users there are, never mind how many linux/webcam users there are. Somehow we have to get around this. I suspect that there are as many linux users as mac users, but they are countable, so get some consideration. Anne
Thanks, Anne. I'm certain that with a bit of effort I could get the webcam working as although I still consider myself a noob, I can find way way around google and I'm not the first to encounter this problem. If I do get stuck trying to configure the cam, then I will ask here. But I'm not at that stage yet. The webcam is not critical to me as it Just Works on my Kubuntu desktop. So I'm handling this situation a bit differently. I'm contacting the manufacturer, and I'm involving hit (it?) in the problem. I want them to know that there are distro that the cam Just Works on, and there are those that don't. But most importantly, I want them to understand that linux users exist and wish to use/purchase their products. I might live in a dream world where I'm convinced that I can make a difference. But I'm young and I can still be proven wrong. Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/608/adam_ant.html http://what-is-what.com/what_is/electromagnet.html
