Romain Vignes wrote:
This is a forward of my original message which has been rejected (the
e-mail address I used was not the same than the one used for the
mailing-list subscription).
I apologize for the dual post, in case the other message is delivered to
the list too.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Re: V4L2 to-do list
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 14:20:11 +0200
From: Romain Vignes <romain@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Organization: eProcess
To: video4linux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
References: <200108281118.f7SBIo009471@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<200108281136.AA21812@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
The reason why NSC (aka National Semiconductors) has been silent on
their V4L2 project until now is that the Open Source aspect was not part
of their initial plans.
In order to get the same source code a few weeks ago, I had to spend
some non-negligible time contacting NSC, obtaining and signing a NDA,
describing my company and our projects to the NSC french representative,
signing some more licence agreements ...
Now, the source is available for the Open Source community and we should
say "Bravo !" and thank NSC for this decision. They realized that the
best way for encouraging linux developers to work on their Geode
platform was the OSS way. Great !!
But how to handle this specific V4L2 implementation ? Personally, I
think it would be a bad decision to simply ignore it. In fact, they have
added what was missing in the API for their specific needs, and now they
give back their changes to the community.
It is time for the "peer-review" process, ins't it ? After that, why not
trying to establish a kind of convergence between the official V4L2
and the NSC-specific one ?
From what I understand, most (if not all of their changes are driver
specific. If this is the case, then the driver should define its own
ioctls from BASE_VIDIOC_PRIVATE up - this way, it can use v4l2 for the
common interface, and private ioctls for the private functions, with no
interference or API bloat.
-justin
