Peter and Jesse wrote:
Almost every file in the directory ubuntu/media/gspcav1/ is full of hex
tables. Many of them have names like static __u16
[driver_name]_start_data[][3].
Also, several of these files (in different directories) are identified
as needing binary firmware on http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/firmware.
Peter
I've looked at a few of those files and it looks like most (all?) of
them are copyrighted by private individuals rather than companies. Some
of the comments say that the data has been reverse engineered by way of
USB snooping. I believe most webcams are similar to Winmodems: almost
all of the action happens in software. I can imagine that such software
would include some magic initialization data.
I think the authors did enough snooping to get the devices to work, but
didn't bother to dig into it deeper to find out what all command codes
and data actually meant. Comments on some lines indicate that they did
find out for some parts of it.
Despite the large amount of hex values and the code being rather terse
and vague, I don't think the code has been deliberately obfuscated. So I
think these files can be marked as free. I also don't immediately see
any evidence of a requirement for proprietary firmware apart from the
files that are included.
This is just my subjective opinion. I don't know how these drivers are
usually developed. As long as someone more knowledgeable in this field
or one or more of the authors haven't confirmed this, it's probably
safer to mark them as non-free.
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