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[linux-dvb] GPL violation (was: is twinhan dvbs-ci supported?)
I just thought to point out the subject, so that the other bttv
authors may be aware of it.
Marcus
Ralph Metzler writes:
> Holger Waechtler writes:
> > Ralph Metzler wrote:
> > > Am Dienstag, 21. Januar 2003 11:13 schrieb Ralph Metzler:
> > >
> > >>a.schinkel@vosschemie.de writes:
> > >> > hi ppl!
> > >> >
> > >> > does one know if this one is supported? i donīt know which chipset is on it.
> > >> >
> > >> > http://www1.alternate.de/html/nodes_info/jk-w01.html
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>No, the twinhan card is not supported.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > OK, at least the Linux drivers written by Twinhan seem to be
> > > publically available now at http://www.usa-x.org/down/index.php
> > >
> > > But they are using their own API and are not open sourced (only some
> > > applications which come with it).
> > > Furthermore, a short disassembly and comparison of strings reveals
> > > that at least some parts of the driver contain code from BTTV, the
> > > Bt8x8 Linux driver.
> >
> > have you tried estimate how many work would be required to modifiy our
> > driver for bt878-based cards to get the Twinhans working?
> >
> > Peter Hettkamp wrote this driver initialy for Pinnacle's PCTV cards a
> > while ago and Florian Schirmer ported it to the 2.5 tree last weeks. He
> > also added support for bt878 based Nebula DVB-T cards.
>
>
> I don't know how long it would take. I haven't looked at that new bt878
> driver yet.
>
> Twinhan use a microcontroller on their card which controls the whole
> frontend. A few months ago I was in contact with Twinhan (initiated by
> somebody who wanted to pay us for writing a driver at that time).
> They declined to give out any information on the proprietary protocol
> they use to talk to the microcontroller.
> Now that their Linux driver seems to be available publically I decided to take
> a closer look and found the GPL violations I reported above.
>
> So, while they have a problem with giving out some information
> on some bytes protocol they use to talk to the MC, they have no
> problem to take code from GPLed projects and put it in their
> binary drivers.
> The protocol is not hard to reverse engineer. I also had a look
> at that part of the binary. But I am not really inclined to support
> a driver for their card anymore.
> There are other cheap budget cards. The upcoming Flyvideo DVB card
> e.g. is easy to support. Maybe there also is some really good
> competition for the big TT cards very soon ...
>
>
> Ralph
>
>
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