anti-NDA petition [for Philips USB webcams]

[ Thanks to Jeroen Vreeken for this
announcement. ]

Hello,

I am currently working at Philips in Eindhoven, The Netherlands
for my graduation. Here we make amongst other thing USB webcams.
For these there is an excellent linux driver, but the author
had to sign an NDA in order to get the specifications of the
communication protocol. I have been trying to convince people
here to drop at least part of the NDA so that an open source driver
will be possible. So far the answer has been no.

It turns out that open source osses are considerd to have to
litle users to be a valid market. I was however promissed that if I
could show that is was much bigger then they thought they would
reconsider. I therefor urge everyone to write an email to my email
address at philips: jeroen.vreeken@philips.com
You do not have to buy a camera, just state that IF you were buying
one you would buy one with opensource drivers available. Please
write polite mails and mention ‘open source’ or your opensource os
in the subject. I will need at least a few thousand emails.

Jeroen Vreeken,
jeroen.vreeken@philips.com