Re: Reverse engineering (was Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario)

Lee Revell
2005-12-06T22:21:46Z

On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 16:49 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > 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.
>
> The _potential_ for problems is very high:
>
> 1) [ref Alan's email] copying programming sequences
>
> 2) Lack of Chinese wall requires TRUST and EVIDENCE that you did the
> rev-eng without "source code that fell off the back of a truck" [i.e.
> illegally obtained] or "docs that fell off the back of a truck."
>
> 3) Lack of Chinese wall increases the likelihood that a SCOX or other
> entity could use that as a legal weapon against Linux.
>
> In Linux, I really have no way of knowing how questionable a driver
> submission is, if it did not arrive from the Chinese wall approach, or a
> known hacker with a valid path to hardware docs/engineers/code. Past
> experience shows that Mr. Unknown Hacker is likely to take legal
> shortcuts when writing the driver.
>
> If I accept code of highly questionable origin, then I put Linux in
> jeopardy.

Should this high barrier to entry for reverse engineered drivers be
documented anywhere? I would have expected black box reverse
engineering to be OK for Linux driver development.

Lee