Reverse engineering (was Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario)

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Lee Revell wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 14:41 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> > Lee Revell wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 14:13 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > >
> > > > Let's hope the rev-eng people do it the right way, by having one team 
> > > > write a document, and a totally separate team write the driver from
> > > > that document.
> >
> > > Isn't it also legal for a single person or team to capture all IO
> > > to/from the device with a bus analyzer or kernel debugger and write a
> > > driver from that, as long as you don't disassemble the original driver?
> >
> > It's still legally shaky.  The "Chinese wall" approach I described above 
> > is beyond reproach, and that's where Linux needs to be.
>
>
> I know you are not a lawyer but do you have a pointer or two?  As long
> as we are REing for interoperability I've never read anything to
> indicate the approach I described could be a problem even in the US.

The _potential_ for problems is very high:

1) [ref Alan's email] copying programming sequences

2) Lack of Chinese wall requires TRUST and EVIDENCE that you did the 
rev-eng without "source code that fell off the back of a truck" [i.e. 
illegally obtained] or "docs that fell off the back of a truck."

3) Lack of Chinese wall increases the likelihood that a SCOX or other 
entity could use that as a legal weapon against Linux.

In Linux, I really have no way of knowing how questionable a driver 
submission is, if it did not arrive from the Chinese wall approach, or a 
known hacker with a valid path to hardware docs/engineers/code.  Past 
experience shows that Mr. Unknown Hacker is likely to take legal 
shortcuts when writing the driver.

If I accept code of highly questionable origin, then I put Linux in 
jeopardy.

	Jeff


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