[linux-dvb] Re: =?utf-8?Q?=E5=9B=9E=E8=A6=86:?= VisionPlus Vp-1020 DVB card

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@metzlerbros.de>]

Hi, 

"Jeff" <Jeff@twinhan.com> (by way of Manu Abraham <manu@kromtek.com>) writes:
 > Hi,
 > 	This is the message that i received from  Twinhan. I had been asking them for 
 > quite some time to publish the documentation/src for their drivers. They were 
 > very reluctant to do so, saying that their work was incomplete. 
 > 
 > 	At present they do not have it anywhere on their website. They had promised 
 > to release the source by last Dec 15 (2003) as can be seen from the rest of 
 > the mail.
 > 
 > Yesterday they have sent me the source for their driver on the stock Redhat-9 
 > kernel(2.4.20-18). I thought the source would be helpful, that's why i posted 
 > it onto the list.


Thanks for clearing that up.



 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Manu Abraham [mailto:manu@kromtek.com]
 > Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 7:44 PM
 > To: Jeff@twinhan.com
 > Cc: jhonan@optusnet.com.au
 > Subject: Re: 回覆: VisionPlus Vp-1020 DVB card
 > 
 > 
 > Jeff,
 > 		We are expecting some details regarding the Twinhan DVB cards, to be
[...]
 > Kromtek Systems,
 > Dubai.
 > 
 > On Thursday 06 Nov 2003 7:44 am, you wrote:
 > > Jamie,
 > >
 > > Great thanks for your comments. I will keep them in mind.
 > >
 > > Attached is our driver pakcage LinDV 0.8 release for your reference.
 > >
 > > As I told you, we will open the driver source code to the public in the
 > > very near future (could be on Dec/15). Before that, if you might sign an
 > > NDA, I can release the source code for your private reference.


So, did they forget about that NDA? :-)



 > > In these two years, Twinhan's DTV products are faked in the market
 > > seriously. Fake cards bring us lots of trouble, including financial loss
 > > and support efforts. The problem also makes us hesitate to open further
 > > documents and source codes to the public. However, due to the poor support
 > > for Linux society in the past, Twinhan has also lost lots of business
 > > chances. I believe it's a tradeoff and open source should be the right way
 > > to go.
 > >

That's of course also understandable but in the case of the Twinhan
cards most of the stuff is hidden in the microcontrollers
anyway. Opening the drivers does not tell competitors too much about
the internals. But I guess the microcontroller programs also were 
ripped off by the clone makers ...



 > > Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:30 AM
 > > To: jeff
 > > Cc: manu@kromtek.com; '¤uμ{³B'; 'jennifer_chen'; louis_chen ³¯¼w©u; Jack
 > > (E-mail) Subject: Re: 回覆: VisionPlus Vp-1020 DVB card
 > >
 > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 03:42:46PM +0800, jeff wrote:
 > > > Hi Manu , Jamie ,

[...]

 > > The names of certain routines in your existing drivers are exactly the
 > > same names as the routines used in existing Linux driver code which has
 > > been released under the GPL. Some people have speculated that therefore
 > > GPL code has been appropriated. I don't neccessarily believe this to be
 > > the case, since there is certainly BSD based code that also has the same
 > > names, and I believe the code probably was derived from that.

To clear this up, this was definitely from code already present in 
snapshots of my (GPLed) bttv driver in early 1995, before any BSD code went 
public. But let's not talk about this or even some other parts of the just
released sources ...


Ralph


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