Hi Sven On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 07:32:02PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: ...CUT... > > Will all reverse engineered drivers with hardcoded values be considered > > as closed source? Must you always release everything that you know > > when you release somehting as open source? > > Must we release the instructions on how to paint an image, how to > > move the arm while painting if we release an image as open source? > > > > I think this is worth considering. Personally I think this bug can > > be closed. > > But your thinking are giving us an excellent way out. We could simply take all > those binary blobs that are in the kernel, and try to take a guess about the > instruction set which they are designed for, and disasemble them, and provide > the dissasembled version under the GPL, as well as a instructions to > re-assemble them into the actual binary blob. > > If we were to achieve that, i would be more than happy to consider these blobs > and their corresponding reverse-engineered asm codes as actual source. > > One may argue that in this case, the actual documentation of the registers > may be more of a source for such binary blobs, but it would in any case be no > worse than any other reverse-engineering effort out there.
I fully agree that this kind of work would be a good thing. Such improvements would most problably be a benifit for the open source community and maybe would give us better functionality in the end. The question is if it is a violation or not to release as is. The other good (or bad?) thing is that we would need cross-compilers for most major instruction-sets as reassembling probably mean compiling for a different architecture. Regards, // Ola > Friendly, > > Sven Luther > -- --- Ola Lundqvist systemkonsult --- M Sc in IT Engineering ---- / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Annebergsslingan 37 \ | [EMAIL PROTECTED] 654 65 KARLSTAD | | http://opalsys.net/ Mobile: +46 (0)70-332 1551 | \ gpg/f.p.: 7090 A92B 18FE 7994 0C36 4FE4 18A1 B1CF 0FE5 3DD9 / --------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
