[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

[Yan Seiner]

Jeff Simpson wrote:

>>I have a sneaky feeling that the days of non-GPLed video card binary blobs
>>are numbered.  That's just a personal hunch of mine, and I haven't really
>>seen anything to indicate anything of this sort coming down the pike.
>>    
>>
>
>This scares me. I don't think linux is *quite* to the point where it
>is big enough to bully the hardware manufacturers into doing what we
>want. If linux says "no more non-gpl kernel drivers", the big hardware
>manufacturers will just stop making them, they aren't going to just
>throw in the towel and say "you win, here's all our code opened for
>you". We'll be stuck making do with less-than-perfect drivers for a
>long time before we get up to the state we're already at now, and
>forget keeping up with kernel changes.
>  
>

I don't know....  Linksys just started selling the WRT624GL, where the 
'L' stands for linux...  In response to those of us who buy Linksys just 
so we can run linux on a wifi AP.

So the big names are starting to recognize that linux is worth selling 
to....

In the embedded world, the vendor I am dealing with has had 0 inquiries 
about WinCE/XPE.  *All* of their sales are to *nix developers, mostly 
linux with a tiny percentage going to *BSD.  At this point linux runs 
about even with MS in the embedded world in published numbers.  And the 
embedded world is far, far larger than the desktop and server world.

So the manufacturers are starting to listen, because there is money to 
be made.

--Yan