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

Jeff Garzik
2005-12-06T21:49:52Z

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.

Jeff