[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: quickcam: "Free VIDEC access campaign", Step 1

Hanno,

  It's a good cause, and good luck with it.  You have my full support, 
and you'll have my signature as a user and as a developer.  Some 
thoughts/suggestions:

> - third party developers must sign a non-disclosure agreement to get
> information about the VIDEC algorithm from Connectix.

Check the wording carefully on whatever NDA they want you/us to sign.  
Someday I may want to write my own graphics and/or compression 
algorithms; I don't want to sign away my rights to -that-.

> - all other applications require a LICENSE that a third party developer has to
> PAY for (e. g. using the algorithm without the quickcam: to decompress VIDEC
> data stored in files or as part of imaging software).

I don't know that Connectix would care about this.  They distribute a 
freeware player for extrating VIDEC-CODEC from AVI files, don't they?

If we scratch this part of the proposed contract, we can do something 
like what Bart suggested: write a shared library (ported to each 
platform) and "hook" into it from the cqcam/qcam/qcread/etc...  Problem 
there is, that library could easily be used for file (i.e., non-camera) 
sources.

I think Connectix would be far more concerned about people freely 
distributing a compressor CODEC.

> - registered developers MAY NOT distribute source code containing the VIDEC
> algorithm.

Ow.  Fine, fine, we'll have to agree to that.

> - registered developers will have access to the COMPLETE source code of the
> quickcam drivers for windows and macinthos computers.

(your English is fine, but check your ^^^ typing.)

Dream on.  :)  They have posted sample (probably not used in QuickPict) 
code for the protocol.  I have a feeling that we're better off asking 
just for similar sample code demonstrating the decompressor.  They won't 
give us the whole thing.

... not that we need it, right?  I wrote cqcam before I realized they'd 
posted sample C code to do similar things.

> file, with the VIDEC part as a pre-compiled object file.

With care taken to make sure that it can't be used on static files, if 
that turns out to be important.

--Patrick
Follow-Ups: References: