[mythtv] Off-topic ranting (was: mythtv presentation at the CeBIT)

[gettler at acm.org]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 21:17:43 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:

> 
> > By the way, does Hauppauge give out specs to their USB devices,
> > their Nova-Ci or the elderly IBM chips in the mvp?
> 
> Are you asking for such, or is this rhetorical/academic? AFAIK most
> about the MVP is already published, since it was GPL to begin
> with. The IBM kernel modules are not, and getting IBM to release them
> is quite difficult. It's easy to blame that on Hauppauge, too, I guess
> =2E..

Let me clarify, with respect to the MVP.

Hauppauge violated the GPL with their original MVP release, by putting their
audio/video player inside busybox and not releasing it.  They split it out
in later releases, but I don't believe they ever rectified the original
mistake (ie, the MVP is still listed on the Busybox Hall-of-Shame).

Hauppauge never released any specs related to the MVP, nor did they ever
release any code (aside from vanilla Busybox and the MontaVista Linux 2.1
kernel).  We all assumed this was due to NDAs with IBM, but I never heard
a straight answer on that.

A few people (myself included) reversed engineered the Hauppauge code and
figured out how to do interesting things on the MVP itself.  It didn't take
too long before we could do more things on the MVP than the Hauppauge code
could do.  At that point, the fact that Hauppauge wasn't releasing anything
became a moot point.

Recently, someone with a stb02500 development kit gave the IBM kernel module
source to an MVP user who asked for them.  I wouldn't exactly call that a
source release.  Basically, IBM had their standard low-level copyrights all
over them (like I've seen on PIBS, EPOS, etc.), which basically says you
can do whatever you want with the source.

So in short, everything done with the MVP up until now has been done blind.
But that may change, since the driver source is now out in the open.

However, I'd blame IBM for that situation.  I have seen their commercials
(before I became a MythTV user :-) talking about how open source was so
wonderful, but in this case they were being very closed.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe Hauppauge is to blame for some or all
of this, but I don't believe that at the moment.

Jon