On 8/17/07, Henk <henk.vergonet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There's also some responsibility by the users: > > Users should THINK before they buy unsupported devices. If possible > buy devices that are supported by mainline. > > This is the only way we can convince manufactures to contribute to the > Linux community. > > On Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 01:09:19AM -0300, Daniel Fraga wrote: > > That's the problem. While the developers discuss these things, > > the users are waiting forever. And i think that if Linux really wants > > to support well most of the devices, something should be done. > > > And remember: some of these developers do this in their spare time without > payment. As a user you cannot make any demands on these people. > > > Otherwise it doesn't make sense the driver development because > > when it finally is done, the device is obsolete and nobody will be > > using it. So driver development should always be as fast as possible, > > because the market (and users) won't wait for Linux developers to code > > the driver. > > > Also don't blame the developers, blame the companies withholding basic > information on how to program these device. > > > I know, I know, it has been done with the good will of some > > programmers, without help of manufacturers, but we should ask: so why > > programmers are doing this? What's the objective? > > > - Fun, > - unlock extended product features, > - long term product support. > - Freedom and ownership, a GNU/Linux system will put control in the hands > of the user. > - Technical advancement of your favorite OS. > > > If it was not by Markus' effort, I couldn't use my Xceive based > > board, so I support his initiative. And as far as I know, he's the only > > programmer working on this specific tuner. > > > > To sum up: there's no time to waste. Linux needs more code and > > less discussion. > > > Code development in the Linux framework is basically an effort into > bringing humans together into cooperation. > > I think that Markus is now tied to companies by legal agreements. So even > if differences between linuxtv and Marcus get resolved Marcus probably will > not be allowed to release source code for some of the chips discussed. > > That is probably one of the reasons why there's a push for a userspace > v4l framework. And we will end up with binary userspace drivers. > > From a users perspective it is probably good to have the device at least > working under Linux, but it would be in my opinion even better if we > would have modules in Linux mainline. > > So the userspace framework is an intermediate solution until we have a > better alternatives. > The reason is that the linuxtv project depends on people who have their own ideas and do not care about other solutions or temporary solutions to get things done, pulling the drivers to userspace adds more flexibility for upcoming devices. Also it's possible to provide one tuner binary for several distributions and kernel versions (most people grab binaries from debian, redhat, suse or whatever distributions and don't deal with sourcecode). The sourcecode can still be distributed. http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php/Userspace_tuner#Advantages There has been a inkernel xc3028 driver available for years and it was intended to go to mainline even though it got denied for those years. Still that driver needs a firmware from userspace thus a inkernel driver would just be a dummy for that chip. Markus _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
