Abstract: Linux is gaining a lot more press these days and causing many companies that once ignored requests for Linux drivers to start hunting down people to write drivers for them. There are a lot of developers that are happy not to get paid money, but to get free hardware in exchange for writing drivers. This is also true for other developers who like to port to new platforms. Manufacturers love it. For a small investment in hardware, they can have free Linux drivers to gain access to the growing millions who run Linux, and those people are in growing numbers emailing manufacturers asking for support. Those with support win big. There are countless people who bought bt848-based tv cards after seeing support for them in their kernels, and back in the earliest days, there's no doubt that Linux spurred some sales of WD80x3 NICs and Adaptec 1542 scsi controllers. Stradis decided they needed drivers for Linux because people asked for them. Then, once Linux was supported, they discovered companies willing to commit to orders of 6000 and 10000 units. The development cycle was very short. This talk will discuss the saga behind the development of this MPEG2 decoder driver and what made it so short, the extensions to the Video4Linux API, and many of the problems involved even with complete technical support from the company that designed the hardware. Panasonic also decided they wanted in on Linux, but the contact did not know the first thing about Linux, yet all the same, full specifications for their DVD-RAM drive were sent and a free drive, and in short order, the drive was functional in Linux. This project will be briefly covered as well.
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-10-12
Language: en
Type: article
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