Lone Programmer Writes 352 Webcam Drivers For Linux

mrneutron2004 writes "A French physician and ardent Linux supporter is the one man you can all thank for adding support for 352 webcams in Linux. The Open Source OS world may still be a bit of a mess when competing with the ease of Windows, but efforts like this make you wonder. One man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do. And none of the major Linux distributions back this guy's efforts, even the big players dipping into the corporate world's coffers."

Hey Scuttlemonkey

[by Anonymous Coward]

What kind of a geek misspells Bawls? And an editor at Slashdot no less. For SHAME!

The French help America once again!

[by Anonymous Coward]

And again France helps America win it's freedom!!!

Re:First frenchman in history

[by Anonymous Coward]

If of course, by "in history", you mean other than 99.9% of the rest of history.

The French are notorious for not giving up, with one exception, when their "allies" deserted them with the entire German army on their doorstep.

"Liberty or Death" is a false dichotomy, and a phrase that can only be repeated by someone that has never had to make that choice.
You don't win wars by dying, you win them by living.

Re:First frenchman in history

[Red Flayer (890720)]

I think the American attitude comes from the John Wayne complex we have. The perception is that only cowards and women need people to do their fighting for them (which was the perception of the insulated Americans at home during WWII). Americans at home had no idea of what the French faced; a lot of Americans overseas were just bitter with their lot in the war.

There are even quite a few movies made about the French Resistance. Perhaps some of them are considered beyond the pale to some Americans, because of the

I'll cut that off right there, since the reasons they are beyond the pale to Americans are because they don't glorify America, and because they aren't about Americans. We're so self-centered that even movies about Britain need to be about Americans in Britain.

Not speaking for all Americans, hell, I'm not even speaking of my own views, but mainstream American culture disgusts me.

Re:Hey Scuttlemonkey

[moranar (632206)]

You just lost an excellent opportunity to keep your mouth shut. "He didn't even make the deb pkg files"... What else, do you want mr. Xhaard a hot cup of latte in bed with those? Most distros I've used, including Mandriva and Ubuntu, already package his drivers. I know it because I've used them for months now: If you've ever used an spcaxxx-based webcam, the driver was written by him.

God, I shouldn't need to write this.

WOW!!!!

[axia777 (1060818)]

I am stunned. That is a lot of code to write. That guy is a machine. Props to him 100%.

Re:WOW!!!!

[errxn (108621)]

Anybody else glad that they are not one of this guy's patients?

Re:WOW!!!!

[doti (966971)]

While I still value his work, it's worth noticing that the /. title is a lot misleading. He didn't made 253 different drivers, but one driver that works on 253 different webcams that have a lot in common.
From TFA:

FC: So how did the ice ball grow to reach today's 253+ webcams supported with several different chipsets?
MX: Starting with the Sunplus chipset support, I realised that most code in the core driver could be "shareable" to support several webcam chipset(s). That is why the "GSPCA" drivers now support over 250 webcams from different chipset vendors.

Re:WOW!!!!

[pclminion (145572)]

He didn't made 253 different drivers, but one driver that works on 253 different webcams that have a lot in common.

Writing a solid core that easily integrates with over 253 device-specific modules is something to be DAMNED impressed by. I always love it when I'm given some new requirement at work, and it just fits right in to my existing infrastructure almost effortlessly. It means I designed the thing properly in the first place. This guy has done that, 253 times.

Yes, a machine.

[Palmyst (1065142)]

What we need, obviously, is a Beowulf cluster of French Physicists.

Re:Yes, a machine.

[xappax (876447)]

Would a werewolf cluster work in the interim?

No way! The last thing we need is an American werewolf cluster in Paris.

Re:WOW!!!!

[StikyPad (445176)]

Lonely Programmer Writes 352 Webcam Drivers For Linux

There. Fixed that.

Amazing

[SirJorgelOfBorgel (897488)]

An amazing feat, this man should be recognized. Linux will never be on the desktop if your teenage daughter cant videochat with predators 2000 miles away! I for one welcome this new voyeur overlord.

Re:Amazing

[by Anonymous Coward]

> "One man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do."

s/can/wants to/g

There. Fixed that for you. :)

That's because he doesn't any more

[cicho (45472)]

Saddam is no longer in a position to write drivers. That's why Vista users are SOL.

Summary Title

[jeffy210 (214759)]

And even the summary title wants to short him for 99 cameras to his credit!

Re:Summary Title

[by Anonymous Coward]

It gets worse...

Slashdot Title? 253
Article text/Slashdot summary? 352
Article photo caption? 235

For once

[einhverfr (238914)]

one can argue that this was not entirely the fault of Slashdot editors. Maybe the real number was 532?

Re:Summary Title

[Reverend528 (585549)]

He wrote those 99 drivers in the time it took for the article to be posted.

Dear Michel Xhaard

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thank you

Ballz?

[6Yankee (597075)]

from the twelve-cases-of-ballz-later department

Just don't ask how a physician gets twelve cases of balls... *crosses legs*

But not, apparently...

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

important enough for his name to get into a Slashdot summary. Oh well, at least he wasn't referred to as "the French Linux driver guy", like how Ramanujan was "the Indian math guy".

Re:But not, apparently...

[jez9999 (618189)]

His name is Michel Xhaard.

I hate this..

[.Chndru (720709)]

The man wrote 350+ drivers. How about some link love for him, slashdot? http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html [mxhaard.free.fr]

Donation Link??

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

How about a link to his paypal account? Anyone?
I'd donate a few bucks.

Re:Donation Link??

[AchiIIe (974900)]

You only need an email address (or phone number) to send paypal money. And here you go: [e-mail]

Paypal link: Send money - Enter email or phone [paypal.com]

-- Note: It's on his website as well: http://mxhaard.free.fr/apropos.html [mxhaard.free.fr]

Not 352 seperate drivers

[rminsk (831757)]

The programmer did not write 352 seperate drivers for web cams, he wrote drivers for 8 different camera bridge chips and different versions of those chipss.

Re:Not 352 seperate drivers

[Bastard of Subhumani (827601)]

I don't know about you, but in that case he beats me by at least 8 bridge chips and numerous versions thereof ...

Re:Not 352 seperate drivers

[ewhac (5844)]

Having written my share of device drivers, that's still an accomplishment worthy of note, especially if the documentation was thin or (unjustifiably, all-too often) non-existent.

Schwab

Behind every great inventor

[Demona (7994)]

So where is the heroic bureaucrat who can get this hellhole running so efficiently, that all the labour can be done by a single Australian man?

Capture Peripherals Are the Red-Headed

[mpapet (761907)]

step children in the computer world. Especially web cams.

Add to that the misery of attempting to hack to every proprietary firmware variation on every camera and hunting down someone who knows something about the camera firmware/driver and the misery is tripled. I know I owe this guy for my webcam working like magic.

In theory with SIP (VOIP) video conferencing is ready for the masses, but I still don't see web cams taking off as a kind of must-have accessory. You still don't see brands like HP jumping in and flushing logitech out of the business.

Anyone have any insight as to why that is?

The best one I ever saw was a USB product that was sold under the Kodak brand. I was shocked at how bad the integrated web cam in the mac laptop is.

Physicist, not physician

[thib_gc (730259)]

The article and the summary say that this guy is a physician, but he isn't. He's a physicist. The French word for physicist is physicien. Apparently someone got their words mixed up (but that's okay because they also appear to have their digits mixed up anyway).

to bad it's not in mainline kernel

[the Hewster (734122)]

I have to applaud this person for the huge work he has done to support all these webcams under Linux. However, from what I could tell from a quick google search, he seems to be one of these developpers who write GPL drivers for Linux (also GPL) but then refuse to have them included in the mainline kernel for some mystical reason.
This situation really makes me sad because thousands, perhaps millions of people could have their webcam "just work" out of the box, but instead, they have to do all sorts of voodoo magic (look on google, find the package, compile it, patch source etc.). Statistically, a percentage of these people will spend a lot of time getting it to work, some people will fail to make it work and some won't even bother. What a waste.
The worst part of it is that the driver, being GPL, could be included legally without the autor's consent however, this would risk alienating this valuable developper. Imagine if the people developping drivers for motherboard chipsets had the same attitude and what that would do to the usability of Linux.
So please, Michel Xhaard, do a huge favor to the whole Free software comunity at little or no cost to yourself and get that driver in mainline.

Licence to print money

[Qbertino (265505)]

This is a business model waiting to bring in the big bucks. Get some VC, some quality hardware people and have this guy join the team. Make good, true x-plattform cams. Profit.

A man with an asset like the knowlege he has is a gold mine when treated the right way.

Coming soon to a distro near you

[dogwelder99 (896835)]

Anyone else start to hear the movie trailer guy's voice reading the summary?

In a world of drivers gone mad... one man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do...

Re:253 or 352?

[Frequency Domain (601421)]

You know how Europeans always write their dates the reverse of the USA? This is like that, only different.

Re:Let the market speaks

[cowscows (103644)]

Some people enjoy the challenge and the work involved in maintaining and/or improving things that they own, whether that's a car or a computer. This guy could've thrown his webcam away and then gotten another, but instead he installed an OS where he could freely see and tinker with all the guts, and make the hardware he had already spent money on work.

Apparently he really enjoyed the project, because he went and did basically the same thing a few hundred times more. Good for him.

This is why I wrote a Wacom driver for Mac OS X

[Slur (61510)]

(Shameless plug) I had this tablet I'd spent $500 on back when it first came out, and I was going to be damned if I didn't get support for it on my favorite OS. It took something like 3 years to get it into shape, but now I have this project with a life of its own. Most recently I was prompted to add support for TabletPC computers running Mac OS X unsupported. All along the way, I've had people interested in the results, who have helped me to add support for their tablets. The internet has made it possible to collaborate instantly with people you've only just connected with for the first time, and do in a matter of days what might have taken weeks.

So it doesn't surprise me that this guy's driver works for so many cameras. So many of these hardware devices with different brand names use the same off-the-shelf chip-sets. And serial devices are all very similar in their protocols, so new drivers are easier to make.

I don't think my driver for their old serial tablets has cost Wacom much in sales, and that was never the intent. Their new USB tablets are thinner and totally hassle-free, which makes them attractive for most people. There have been a few people who told me they had specifically held out on buying a new Wacom USB tablet, and who either had put the old one away or were using it with Mac OS 9. And there were a few people who had bought USB-Serial adapters only to find that no driver existed to make their tablets work. I sympathized with both situations somewhat, and this also spurred me on.

As an open source developer I have the advantage of total loyalty to my project, and not to any other parasitic motive. So when I get a feature working in my driver or control panel, it remains available. A company may remove features to encourage upgrades, and reducing functionality for non-technical reasons is evil.

I propose a new holiday: Driver Writers' Day. It could co-incide with the date of the first shipment of Mountain Dew.

Re:Let the market speaks

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

What if you got the camera without realising it?
What if its been sat in a drawer for years 'cos it worked "sometimes" and you didn't find a real use because of the stability?
What if it was second hand?
Some people cannot afford to waste money buying extra kit and won't look the gift horse in the mouth.

We have become such a wasteful generation.
If something doesn't quite work right, we throw it away.

Cameras are technically simple and most will work in a similar manner (theres only so many ways you can send the same data across a wire). My bet is this guy has created a core driver and is using variants on the devices, this allows all those useless cameras before to now be usable. There must be millions of similar working devices around the world.

Why bitch at him for helping?

People now won't have to suffer with crap 'cos they can be made to work well (apparently).
props to him.

Re:Let the market speaks

[KingSkippus (799657)]

No, you misunderstand. The person who gave up on W2K is the reporter, not the guy who created the drivers. The guy who wrote the drivers did it because he bought webcams for his daughters and they didn't have drivers.

As for you comment, it's not the camera that has the problem; it's the drivers, and that's what he fixed for Linux. In your analogy, it's more like buying a used car with a heavy discount because it has a dirty air filter. If you know that the car is perfectly fine with a new air filter, why not buy it? A famous man once said, "A dirty air filter does not a bad car make." (Okay, I admit it, it was me, just then, and I guess I'm not that famous.)

Re:Let the market speaks

[solafide (845228)]

He has 352 daughters?

Re:Let the market speaks

[xtracto (837672)]

No, 253...

well, that was before after editors wrote the title and before their wrote the summary.
He might not have a TV

Re:Let the market speaks

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

So how does the market know?

In Linux, this is possible. You actually have chances of getting somebody knowledgeable to tell you that the hardware itself sucks (there used to be comments about how much realtek hardware sucks somewhere in the kernel source), or that the driver isn't properly written. Linux also makes it easy to make it possible for people to tell you so: somebody can tell you to run "lspci -v" and "dmesg" and paste it into your mail, which is easy even if you have no clue what all that stuff is.

Windows on the other hand, gets more and more obscure with each passing day. Starting from XP it reboots instead of letting you see the BSOD, so without considerable effort you can't even find what went wrong. You go to make tea, come back, and the box mysteriosly rebooted meanwhile. Windows installations are also often infested with spyware, which makes it a lot harder to figure out what exactly is going wrong, as something going wrong in bizarre ways is depressingly common.

There's also that consumers are simply not informed. Most people don't spend time googling around to try to find out whether the webcam they're about to buy is any good. If they find reviews, often they will be by somebody who tried it for 15 minutes, which will miss any longer term issues. About the only way of a bad one getting abandoned by consumers is that it's such incredible crap that even people with no experience at all see it's horrible and return it.

Re:Object oriented?

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

See my other post, it's the same thing as with sound cards for instance. Linux doesn't have a driver specifically for the "Creative SB Live Value", it has a driver for the EMU10K1 chip the card is based on. This driver works for several models of the SB Live series, and perhaps even for non-Creative cards if some other company builds cards using the EMU10K1 chip.

Re:Let the market speaks

[DaleGlass (1068434)]

It's a nice theory, but I've never seen it in practice.

I've seen it in practice on Linux -- my bug report resulted in an email from the developer the next day, and a fix for the bug I found in the next few hours.

Sure you can send reports to MS, but I've never ever seen anything come out of it. If the device manufacturer ever gets around fixing it I won't hear about it, and if MS does fix it I won't notice either -- it'll be quietly rolled into the next service pack that might come out 4 months later, if it gets there at all.

And that still doesn't address what I was talking about, anyway. Yeah, great, the user can click "ok" and get a dump sent to MS. Wonderful. And meanwhile what? An user still can't find out what failed without a developer's asistance, and on Linux those are a whole lot easier to get a hold of, and a lot more responsive. Patches for kernel exploits come out in *hours*.

Re:how many?

[fudgefactor7 (581449)]

Not Dyslexia, it's Dyscalculia when dealing with numbers.

Re:how many?

[treeves (963993)]

Should have just said "300, give or take 50."

Re:In other news...

[IdleTime (561841)]

Maybe, but according to the article, he has had sex at least two times more than you have.

Re:Damn..

[matt me (850665)]

Too bad all the stupid chicks that show their tits, don't use linux.

Too bad for you all the stupid chicks who use linux don't show their tits. :p

Errr...

[Ayanami Rei (621112)]

the vast majority of USB video cameras are not UVC compliant. Even the expensive Philips chipset-derived models are in their own world.

UVC compliance is very recent and spotty.

There's 20-odd V4L/V4L2 drivers for linux, of which more than half are just pluggable webcam drivers (mostly USB, and the lone firewire generic)

There's some USB streaming chipset support for those external S-Video adapters and DVR devices, and the rest are PCI attached devices and the venerable BT848 driver.