Thread: Video For BSD
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Old 18th July 2008
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Fritz_Katz Fritz_Katz is offline
Video-4-BSD
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
Nobody said that ATSC/DVB Tuners were supported, uvideo(4) handles UVC devices only, video(4) is a device independent "V4L" compatibility layer.

No drivers have no written to support such devices, porting them from Linux is a bad idea, GPL is only compatible in one direction.. can't have GPL code in a BSD project. (Though honestly, GPL proponents fail to understand the BSD licence and violate it often.).
The FreeBSD license is compatible with the GNU GPL.

Yes you have GPL code in a BSD project. Code licensed under the GNU GPL can be used in other projects, so long as they also are released under the same or a compatible license. We will be 'linking' to the Linux source and providing full source of all our wrappers which we'll release.

There are over 1700 'ports' in FreeBSD /usr/ports -- many are GPL'd. They are pulled in as source and built on FreeBSD. I don't see GNU ever suing FreeBSD. Linus Torvalds himself removed the “you may not distribute it for money” restrictions in 1992.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
video(4) was only recently developed, only uvideo(4) uses it... but, with that in tree, a motivated developer might write a driver for a ATSC/DVB tuner they own, it probably won't be a LKM though.
What about a developer motivated by money (from a corporation) that wants to deploy a multimedia/TV-tuner product built on a FreeBSD platform -- as long as source and modifications to all drivers are available it's OK.

The driver needs to be a LKM if it's going to be widely accepted in *BSD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
It's still early, but I can tell you.. not many will be interested in the concept of recompiling a Linux driver for usage on *BSD.
I suppose the only people who would be interested are those who want to use new hardware; TV-Tuners, hot-pluggable USB devices, cameras, ... etc. in a *BSD environment.

Otherwise why bother with *BSD at all? Why not wipe the drive and replace it with a Linux distro which will run many devices that you need. --- But why bother with the trouble of Linux when most devices just run out-of-the-box on Windoze or a Mac?
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