I was grepping through the Windows binaries looking to see from where messages come when I ran across a little surprise. The Eye-Fi manager software uses a piece of free software called curl. Specifically, they statically link in a library portion of curl, libcurl. It basically implements a little tiny web browser inside of their application so it can talk back to the Eye-Fi web servers.
It is a bit of a shame that Eye-Fi would choose to use free software inside of its products, but neglect Free Software users by not providing specs or software that run on Free operating systems.
By the way, nobody is violating any license or legal terms here. Curl is free to use in the way Eye-Fi uses it. I just don't think it is very nice.
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3 comments:
i agree - you can't even remain logged into their website without the manager running. That's silly.
If you only want to check if things are uploading, there's not valid reason to require the manager to be running.
Come on. Be realistic.
They have to go where the numbers are. They are making only an SD version, and they are only going after windows, because that is where the population is.
I hope that in time, they too will release Linux manager. But they, as I, know that the eye-fi card is not meant for people that use Linux, it is meant for our parents.
It is a great product. We should support a great product by an entrepreneurial company. Most of us running linux have access to a single XP machine.
Doesn't matter if it was DESIGNED for our parents, the Open Source community has this nasty habit of taking "Windows Luser" class products and converting them to "Mega-Geek" class products. This server should have a web SERVER built in, not just the Curl web browser. It should be programmable to upload to any arbitrary FTP server.
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