Bluecherry Releases GPL'd MPEG-4 Driver

azop writes "Today Bluecherry released a GPL'd driver for its multiple-input MPEG-4 hardware compression cards. The driver supports audio and video capture from 4-, 8-, and 16-channel single-card encoders using the Video4Linux and ALSA APIs. More information about the driver and its features can be found on Bluecherry's development blog and on Ben Collins' personal blog. Bluecherry is the first Linux software company to release a complete driver based on Linux kernel APIs (Video4Linux and ALSA) for multiple-input hardware-compressed MPEG-4 capture cards under the GPL. The cards are designed for security applications (digital video recording), but other applications could potentially make use of the compressed streams and Video4Linux API integration. An H.264 version is 'in the works.'"

Patent pools!

[ronocdh]

Next up, a headline on MPEG-LA decrying this as an ignominious infringement on scads of their intellectual property. Hopefully projects like this stand a reasonable change at exposing the ludicrousness of the software patent system.

NOT FREE!

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys are evil!

MPEG is owned by a bunch of fascists who charge money for their patents! This should be a WebM driver!

Not likely

[iYk6]

To everyone who knows about software patents, they are already exposed as ludicrous. To everybody else, they wouldn't learn anything from a small company being sued. Few people learned anything about patents from Microsoft vs. TomTom, and those are companies that most people have heard of.

Re:Patent pools!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, imagine if there were no protection for IPs on a chip. All of the sudden, a small firm, let's say sandforce, has a great idea, and implements it. Imagine a larger company with lower production costs, and not having to do any R&D let's call it intel, says: we want that tech and xray the chip then replicate it. I am not trying to troll by giving this example. I just feel that some patent trolls gave intellectual property a very dirty name. That being said, I work on FOSS and love it. :)

Re:Patent pools!

[N Monkey]

You are talking about a DEVICE. No one here has a problem with patents for THINGS, but we do have a problem with patents on IDEAS. Software patents are just that, patenting an idea, an algorithm. Math. .

You may not patent math per se, but you can patent a novel and non obvious application of it. RSA is a good example. [wikipedia.org]