WHOSE GEAR IS IT, ANYWAY? Camera owner asks Canon, skies: Why is it $5/month for webcam software?

“Software development isn’t free, and I’m happy to pay for software I use regularly,” Zipp writes. “However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, and they should—due to the lack of standards—provide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended. Aside from development costs, there’s no justification for a subscription model, particularly from a company earning nearly $3 billion in profit.”

Zipp’s pointed complaint made the front page of Hacker News, where commenters immediately got sidetracked into a discussion of UK tariff laws on video equipment, sneakers, cookies, and ethanol. But further in, recommendations appear for the open source Magic Lantern camera add-on software, or possibly CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) firmware. Whether or not Zipp can better use his camera as a webcam is somewhat beside the point, or at least the point he’s making.

This from the comments was both crude and on the money: “If you charge a subscription for stuff that uses local hardware and doesn’t need to talk to cloud services or anything else that costs the purveyor money, you’re a f***ing piece of s*** and should be ostracized.”