Talking to Logitech on the phone regarding webcam support for linux

[Dotan Cohen]

On 09/02/07, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> On Friday 09 February 2007 10:06, you wrote:
> >
> > No, bitching won't help. But complaining in an organized fashion to
> > the developers will.
> >
> Dotan, google around pwc and pwcx drivers.  The pwcx driver was built by a
> developer who managed to negotiate with the hardware supplier, subject to a
> NDA.  Eventually the NDA timed out, but he still refused to make public the
> contents of the NDA, saying that if we want hardware suppliers to cooperate
> we need their goodwill.  Personally, I think he was right.  The linux
> community hassled him so much that he gave up.  The kernel developers took
> the hook out of the kernel because they said it was not used generically.
> They did it without warning to him.  He had cause to feel aggrieved.  I can
> personally vouch for the fact that it was a good driver - better than
> anything I'm seeing here, and this was about 3 years ago.  The current pwc
> driver is lousy.
>
> You hit the real problem when you commented that no-one knows how many linux
> users there are, never mind how many linux/webcam users there are.  Somehow
> we have to get around this.  I suspect that there are as many linux users as
> mac users, but they are countable, so get some consideration.
>
> Anne
>

Thanks, Anne. I'm certain that with a bit of effort I could get the
webcam working as although I still consider myself a noob, I can find
way way around google and I'm not the first to encounter this problem.
If I do get stuck trying to configure the cam, then I will ask here.

But I'm not at that stage yet. The webcam is not critical to me as it
Just Works on my Kubuntu desktop. So I'm handling this situation a bit
differently. I'm contacting the manufacturer, and I'm involving hit
(it?) in the problem. I want them to know that there are distro that
the cam Just Works on, and there are those that don't. But most
importantly, I want them to understand that linux users exist and wish
to use/purchase their products.

I might live in a dream world where I'm convinced that I can make a
difference. But I'm young and I can still be proven wrong.

Dotan Cohen

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