CuBox

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Syed Faisal Akber <faisal-nMFrlatgk0VeoWH0uzbU5w at public.gmane.org>

| On 12-01-19 07:59 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| > I wonder how that works since Codecs are usually patent-encumbered.
| >
| I just checked the download.  It's a bunch of shared object libraries (DLL's).
| You don't need to be GPL'd to link against GPL code dynamically.

Oh, and here I thought "Documentation and Sources" meant source.
Silly me.

Still, you *could* distribute source code that is patent encumbered.

I'm not sure what they mean by codecs.  Are these codecs that exploit
the video hardware or are they regular CPU codecs?

| They keep thinking of more and more methods to get around the GPL these days.

Dynamic linking per se isn't an evil work-around.

Most video drivers need to live in kernel space (often as modules).
There is no stable kernel ABI for modules so binary-only modules are
specific to kernel versions and that makes them ephemeral.  Not
something I want.

I think that nVidia has gone to considerable work to make the binary
portion of their video drivers fairly agnostic about kernel versions.
They have an open-source shim that matches a particular kernel with
the binary video driver.  Even so, binary drivers have to be updated
once in a while.  So old nVidia cards are no longer supported on
current kernels with the proprietary drivers.

I think that the situation in the ARM world is much worse.
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