On Tue, Oct 31, 2006 at 09:06:50PM +0100, Ola Lundqvist wrote: > 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.
Patches are welcome :) > The question is if it is a violation or not to release as is. I doubt that there is any more sense in (re-)discussing this. > 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. Nope, because you can ship the source code and the object file if you wanted. Already now, major parts of debian/main are not cleanly buildable out of the box, due to cyclic bootstraping dependencies. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
