Re: wireless (was Re: 2.6.18 -mm merge plans)

Arjan van de Ven
2006-06-05T10:35:38Z

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 11:26 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> Ar Llu, 2006-06-05 am 10:45 +0200, ysgrifennodd Arjan van de Ven:
> > It's just that a cleanroom approach is a sure way to prove
> > you didn't copy. That's all.
>
> Which is an extremely important detail especially if you have been
> reverse engineering another driver for the same or similar OS where it
> is likely that people will retain knowledge and copy rather than
> re-implement things.

oh don't get me wrong, it's important to not copy from the original.
(even if that original did copy from linux ;)

> We've had "fun" with this before and the pwc camera driver. I don't want
> to see a repeat of that.

yet at the same time, the cleanroom approach is not the ONLY way to do
it right. And making following that exact approach a strict requirement
is just silly. And it would mean we'd need to remove quite a few drivers
from the tree if you follow that logic.

And to be fair the pwc camera driver was just a guy with a personality
problem rather than any real legal standing.

Again doing things right is important. But I would say that if you do
the rev-engineering in Europe, just being careful and avoiding copying
should be enough (well and certifying that you were in fact careful and
didn't do any copying).