hi Joel - from the link you sent, it seems that under the DMCA, you need to obtain permission from the manufacturer of the system you are reverse engineering. so for noveau, seems like you have the permission and it is all good. but obviously, it is possible to be denied that permission. you are correct that a hardware vendor should have no issues from some one reverse engineering in order to make a driver, but it is possible that a hardware manufacturer has an exclusive arrangement with a company (like Microsoft) that forces their hand.<br>
<br>the one case i can remember off the top of my head is Bunnie's Xbox crack:<br><a href="http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-996787.html">http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-996787.html</a><br><br>here is another instance where ASF file format decoding was not allowed by MS:<br>
<a href="http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html">http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html</a><br><br>thanks,<br>thushara<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Joel R. Voss <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jvoss@altsci.com">jvoss@altsci.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi,<br>
<br>
I just thought I'd chime in here to say that patent laws do not prevent nor<br>
punish reverse engineering (nor does copyright). Reverse engineering is<br>
protected under fair use. <a href="http://chillingeffects.org/reverse" target="_blank">http://chillingeffects.org/reverse</a> Also hardware<br>
vendors and their patent holders have no reason to litigate over patents<br>
because drivers make their hardware accessible to a larger audience.<br>
<br>
Drivers are definitely a point where Linux is in heavy development. For<br>
example nouveau is reverse engineering and developing nvidia drivers from<br>
scratch. They are a few releases away from a stable 2d driver and possibly a<br>
year away from experimental 3d driver in the kernel. A few years ago wifi was<br>
in poor shape and now it just works for most of the drivers (b43 being one<br>
where extra firmware needs to be downloaded once).<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Regards,<br>
Joel R. Voss<br>
<a href="http://AltSci.com" target="_blank">http://AltSci.com</a><br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Saturday 12 September 2009, Thushara Wijeratna wrote:<br>
> the biggest problem i've found with Linux is the lack of drivers. also GPL<br>
> has restrictions on shipping non-open drivers so one has to go and find<br>
> them. patent laws prevent reverse engineering drivers.<br>
><br>
> thushara<br>
><br>
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Andrew Beyer <<a href="mailto:beyer.andrew@gmail.com">beyer.andrew@gmail.com</a>>wrote:<br>
> > On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Joe moo <<a href="mailto:starquestnerd@gmail.com">starquestnerd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> > > One of the reasons Linux is not as popular as it should be in my<br>
> > > opinion is inconsistencies. It is good to have many different<br>
> > > options(distros) especially for Power Users (like myself) and<br>
> > > Developers. However, the problem with that is all of the<br>
> > > inconsistencies between them, this is a big issue for end users and is<br>
> ><br>
> > I won't argue that it isn't an issue, but I fail to see how you could<br>
> > resolve all the inconsistencies without sacrificing most of the<br>
> > benefits of having the variety in the first place. There are things<br>
> > that _should_ be consistent, where consistency does not meaningfully<br>
> > impact people's choices, but most of them already are...POSIX, LSB,<br>
> > <a href="http://freedesktop.org" target="_blank">freedesktop.org</a>, and others have already resolved most of the<br>
> > low-hanging fruit here. I think the things that they haven't<br>
> > approached or haven't succeeded in standardizing are mostly those<br>
> > where by mandating a standard you take away choices people want to be<br>
> > able to make.<br>
> ><br>
> > > probably why the end-user market doesn't extend much farther than<br>
> > > netbooks.<br>
> ><br>
> > Major hardware vendors marketed netbooks with linux to a general<br>
> > audience. That hasn't happened on the same scale for any other class<br>
> > of hardware (at least any comparable to a pc -- I'll ignore more<br>
> > deeply embedded devices for the moment), so I don't think its really a<br>
> > valid comparison. The vast majority of people use the os that ships on<br>
> > their computer and are unlikely to switch...many don't know they can.<br>
> ><br>
> > > I believe that it is time to set some standards for all of<br>
> > > the projects out there; standards that can be agreed upon and followed<br>
> > > by the majority of projects.<br>
> ><br>
> > Lots of people have tried...good luck.<br>
> ><br>
> > > is because Windoze has an architecture<br>
> > > that most applications follow<br>
> ><br>
> > I'm going a bit off-topic here, but I'd take issue with that. For a<br>
> > single entity, Microsoft can put out an amazing and bewildering array<br>
> > of related and overlapping technologies with the attending<br>
> > inconsistencies and incompatibilities. The core win32 api is<br>
> > relatively clean and consistent, but is pretty much comparable to what<br>
> > posix offers...not enough of a standard to build on from scratch. I<br>
> > think .NET alleviated, if still not resolved the issue. But<br>
> > particularly before then, writing a significant application on windows<br>
> > involved a fair bit of black magic making Win32, MFC, ATL, COM, COM+,<br>
> > ActiveX, the VB runtime, et. al. cooperate unless any one of them<br>
> > provided everything you needed, and you didn't interact with any other<br>
> > software that used any of the others.<br>
> ><br>
> > > WX is one of the greatest examples of a simple cross<br>
> > > platform architecture<br>
> > > ...<br>
> > > One solution to that is the<br>
> > > pitifully unused but amazing autopackage framework!<br>
> ><br>
> > Both technologies which, even if you can argue their technical<br>
> > superiority to other options, are already uncommon/underrepresented.<br>
> > Try to build a standard on that, and you get a "standard" on paper<br>
> > which no one conforms to. Adoption has to come before standardization<br>
> > unless you just want to put out well intentioned documents, or can<br>
> > force people to comply.<br>
> ><br>
> > If you really think these are the solution, your task isn't<br>
> > standardization, it's advocacy... you need to convince people to adopt<br>
> > them. Get a modern and full-featured web browser and office suite to<br>
> > adopt WX as their gui platform. (if you suggest this on the mozilla or<br>
> > <a href="http://oo.org" target="_blank">oo.org</a> lists, please don't cc me on the resulting flamefest :) Get<br>
> > everything (or some significant subset) in Ubuntu's universe or<br>
> > multiverse (or some other sufficiently large set of software) packaged<br>
> > as an autopackage file, and publish a central collection somewhere.<br>
> ><br>
> > > Linux needs to stick to a standard that users can follow if it is to<br>
> ><br>
> > thrive!<br>
> ><br>
> > Does it? Why should every distribution that happens to use the same<br>
> > kernel also make all the same choices and trade-offs in userspace? If<br>
> > you want a consistent set of choices already pre-made for you, why<br>
> > not just stick with windows? Or choose a single linux-based distro and<br>
> > use the software packaged for it? If you want to make your own set of<br>
> > choices, what makes you think they will be any more generally<br>
> > appropriate for everyone else than the ones various distros have made?<br>
> ><br>
> > > PS. No I'm not putting down Linux I'm just suggesting new ideas!<br>
> ><br>
> > And I'm not putting down your ideas, but there have never been a<br>
> > dearth of people with ideas of how linux should "standardize",<br>
> > particularly when said standard would include their favorite bits of<br>
> > software. I'm not saying that there aren't huge improvements to be<br>
> > made in many areas, but I think the solution is to develop and/or<br>
> > spread the better software, not to rhapsodize on the merits of it<br>
> > being declared a standard.<br>
> > _______________________________________________<br>
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