Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Lee Revell
2005-12-06T19:54:30Z

On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 14:41 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 14:13 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >>Let's hope the rev-eng people do it the right way, by having one team
> >>write a document, and a totally separate team write the driver from
> >>that document.
>
> > Isn't it also legal for a single person or team to capture all IO
> > to/from the device with a bus analyzer or kernel debugger and write a
> > driver from that, as long as you don't disassemble the original driver?
>
> It's still legally shaky. The "Chinese wall" approach I described above
> is beyond reproach, and that's where Linux needs to be.

I know you are not a lawyer but do you have a pointer or two? As long
as we are REing for interoperability I've never read anything to
indicate the approach I described could be a problem even in the US.

Lee