On 12/28/06, Rok Markovic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Do we have a right to reverse engineer hardware, or they are protected by patents or something similar that would prevent you from publishing results adn/or drivers (open source).
This is a pretty good resource: http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi Yes, there are probably patents covering this hardware stuff.. and that's why we have all those open source companies that have given their patents to an entity that promises to sue in retalitation if they try to use their patents against open source. So let's not worry about patents ok? They'd be screwed more than us if they try to use them.
Are there any restrictions in how you obtain information - signal analyser, disassembly of windows driver, etc.
Not as far as I am aware. Obviously if you were to disassemble a windows driver, add a wrapper and reassemble, that would be copying.. but if you are trying to figure out how something works by reverse engineering a windows driver then that's ok. At least it is where I live (Australia) because we have laws that allow us to ignore license restrictions that say "thou shalt not reverse engineer" for most interesting purposes. Maybe you have similar laws where you live. Maybe not. Hope that helps, Trent - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
