At Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:21:06 -0500, Ash Willis wrote: > > Hi all, > Sorry for straying a little off topic, but talk of these couple of chips got me > thinking about unsupported hardware in general. > > Does anyone know the legal implications of reverse engineering with regards to > producing new drivers? I myself wouldn't mind reversing a certain chip or two > but I'm not too aware of the legality of it all, particularly in the case where > the vendor is hostile or unwilling to release chip information. > > In general, is it legally acceptable to reverse engineer for the purposes of > interoperability? > > Are vendors likely to make a noise if their hardware gains support under Linux > without or against their consent? or is it more a matter of protecting the > original product specification than hiding details of the product's interface? > > Takashi, may I ask your thoughts on this? What's your position on accepting > reverse engineered code? (Let's assume that the driver works as well as one > written in a more correct manner ;)) > I'm fully aware that uncooperative vendors don't deserve to have their hardware > supported, but I think that Linux users and Linux itself deserves the support. IANAL, so just an empirical guess: the Linux kernel has many device drivers written after some reverse-engineering work, so it must be OK in a certain level. The reverse-enginnering itself is allowed in many countries. The question is rather the legality of the derivative works. My understanding is that the way of reverse-engineering is also another point. For example, snooping the protocol is a very clean way, and a fairly safe way. Disassembling is questionable, but it'd be hard to prove only from the source code. I've never heard of complains from hardware vendors about it, though. Anyway, I think the problem in the case of SB X-Fi is no juridical but technical one. Such a complex chip is likely very hard to do reverse engineering. Unfortunately, we have so far no contact with Creative Labs, and I have no idea how real is their plan to release the linux (even ALSA) driver as announced sometime ago... Takashi _______________________________________________ Alsa-devel mailing list Alsa-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
