I don't think it would be a significant number. If you're that much
of a geek, you can probably already find a dis-assembler, etc.
But, in any case, that's irrelevant. I don't really see the benefit
to Pentax in doing this - if the camera is already discontinued,
then it's not going to increase sales. And it *will* increase the
number of support calls, even if the only answer is "sorry - you
messed with the firmware, so we aren't going to look at the camera".
I don't know if I'd agree with that. There are a rather large
(and growing) number of geeks that have embraced open-source style things.
Given the fairly equal technical footing of all the major brands of DSLRs,
ones that have geek-appeal will likely sway a large number of them.
Geek-friendly features of Pentax as compared to other
brands already include:
- Standard batteries (friendly with other geektoys)
- HUGE array of old and cheap lenses with K-mount everything.
- SD memory... also friendly with other modern geektoys
- TIFF-format RAW files
Probably others I can't think of right now. If you look at other
geek-friendly open projects (e.g. MythTV), hardware that works well with
it has a built-in advantage:
For example:
http://www.pchdtv.com/
http://www.everythingusb.com/plextor_convertx_linux_sdk.html
-Cory
--
*************************************************************************
* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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