Re: [gNewSense-users] ubuntu/media/gspcav1 full of hex tables

[Sam Geeraerts]

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.