GPL'd Driver and Linux Support For New H.264 Capture Card 119
azop writes "Almost a year ago Slashdot covered the story of a MPEG-4 multiple input capture card with a GPL Video4Linux licensed driver. Earlier this year, Ben Collins added H.264 support into the solo6x10 Video4Linux2 GPL driver. The H.264 PCIe cards are finally released and shipping to customers. The new cards support faster frame rates and sport a PCIe interface. The driver is available for forkin' on Github."
Also not necessiarly that useful (Score:4, Funny)
Depends on the device but the firmware may well be something that isn't very accessible to users. For example if the device uses an FPGA, which many do, then the firmware might be the FPGA programming. Ok fair enough, but do you have the Xilinx development software and hardware, not to mention expertise, to mess with it? Not nearly as easy or cheap as firing up a compiler and messing with a driver.
Even if not, if the firmware is just code for something onboard kinda like a BIOS/UEFI on a PC, it could still be pretty difficult for users to deal with.
There's also the issue of bricking the device. Messing with the driver might screw up the OS if done badly enough, but the device should be fine. However messing with the firmware could render the device unusable, and depending on how bad it was messed up could render it unfixable in that you couldn't flash a stock firmware back on it.
Too much risk for not much reward overall, which is probably a big reason not to do it.