Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc)
Quoted 7 lines · Linus Torvalds
Quoted 3 lines · Christoph Hellwig
It's not up to him to decide. He can step down from his maintainership, but he can't force the driver to be removed.
Yes and no. From a legal standpoint you're right. However, we should also be polite. If he's the sole author, and he asks for it, I think it's reasonable to honor his wishes.
Doubtfully of course. I maintain a small OSS applicatione and although it sucks, it wouldn't be there where it is now w/o input from others. Some are better at writing code, others making patches and others complaing why XYZ doesn't work. But all do contribute.
Imho it would be very unpolite to them to just say, thanks for everything but this app is dead and btw. I removed all references to it. Please play be the rules, GPL is GPL period (and don't make this a weak spot for OSS by being soft).
Quoted 5 lines
Of course if some new maintainer shows up and decides to infer how the device worked by looking at the original open-source code, that's also clearly fine.
I don't want people to play lawyer. Honoring peoples rights to the code they write is more important than just the law.
I'm sure this will resolve one day (in the meantime, I've put what I had on my hd on http://www.xs4all.nl/~jjvrieze/pwc.html, please alert if the md5sum are incorrect for those having this somewhere too).
Koos
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"Koos" == Koos Vriezen <[email protected]> writes:
Koos> On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>> >
>> > It's not up to him to decide. He can step down from his >> maintainership, > but he can't force the driver to be removed. >> Yes and no. From a legal standpoint you're right. However, we >> should also be polite. If he's the sole author, and he asks for >> it, I think it's reasonable to honor his wishes.
Koos> Doubtfully of course. I maintain a small OSS applicatione Koos> and although it sucks, it wouldn't be there where it is now Koos> w/o input from others. Some are better at writing code, Koos> others making patches and others complaing why XYZ doesn't Koos> work. But all do contribute. Imho it would be very unpolite Koos> to them to just say, thanks for everything but this app is Koos> dead and btw. I removed all references to it. Please play Koos> be the rules, GPL is GPL period (and don't make this a weak Koos> spot for OSS by being soft).
>> Of course if some new maintainer shows up and decides to infer >> how the device worked by looking at the original open-source >> code, that's also clearly fine. I don't want people to play >> lawyer. Honoring peoples rights to the code they write is more >> important than just the law.
Koos> I'm sure this will resolve one day (in the meantime, I've Koos> put what I had on my hd on
Koos> http://www.xs4all.nl/~jjvrieze/pwc.html, please alert if the Koos> md5sum are incorrect for those having this somewhere too).
Under what license were the binary modules distributed ?
Marcus
Signature · 5 lines
/--------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Dr. Marcus O.C. Metzler | | | [email protected] | http://www.metzlerbros.de/ | \--------------------------------------------------------------------/ |>>> Quis custodiet ipsos custodies <<<|