On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 06:44:36PM -0400, Brian Ristuccia wrote: > [snip]
> > So I think in the best case this piece of software is contrib, but
> > reverse engineering is prohibited in a number of countries
>
> More important is whether or not reverse engineering was prohibited in the
> country where it actually took place. In most places, including the United
> States, reverse engineering is a legitimate engineering practice engaged in
> by almost every hardware manufacturer and software publisher.
>
nice to hear.
> > and so
> > I am not sure if this would be better go into non-free or even stay
> > out of the archive. Therefore I am asking for some advice.
> >
>
> Since we can't distribute the firmware at all without infringing, it can't
> even go in contrib or non-free.
>
> One way to deal with the situation would be to reverse engineer the
> microcode to produce a specification on the instruction set, and then write
> new microcode based on the specification. Another way is to get permission
> to distribute the microcode (and preferably its source code as well) from
> the copyright holder.
>
Well actually the microcode is a whole mystery of its own. I am even
not quite sure if there is any open source compiler that could create
binaries for that chip. So reverse engineering that piece is
something beyond the current possibilities.
> A third, less optimal solution might be to require the user to provide their
> own copy of the Windows .vxd file from which the firmware would be extracted
> at runtime. In this case, the software could go in contrib. If the user is a
> legitimate owner of the card in question, they probably own a copy of the
> .vxd file as well and so won't be inconvenienced too badly.
>
That is actually the current solution of upstream which I have taken
over in the .deb . So it's contrib then.
Thanx for pointing out those solutions.
--
kind regards,
Michael Moerz
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