Gary Gendel wrote:
> The BSD driver was declared as a "clean-room" generated driver. I don't see
> what Intel has to gain by stopping this. Besides, OpenSolaris has ported the
> BSD drivers for other Intel chipsets.
>
First, IANAL.
The issue isn't whether it was clean-room or not. The issue is whether
the people who did the port had a legal right to do so, per the terms of
their agreement(s) with Intel. (The agreements being implied by use of
Intel's software.)
We're not talking about "sane" arguments here, we're talking about what
happens when the lawyers get involved.
In the case of other Intel drivers, it is quite possible that no reverse
engineering was required. Intel has probably made specs available for a
lot of their devices.
The question is whether the OpenBSD folks reverse engineered the driver,
or worked from public specifications. Working from public
specifications is OK. Reverse engineering may or may not be OK,
depending on how restrictive your agreements with the supplier are.
(They usually forbid reverse engineering.) And then there is the
question of how likely the supplier is to pursue action. Action against
OpenBSD wouldn't serve anybody. But Intel could very well want to have
a stick to use against Sun -- Sun's endorsement of AMD probably doesn't
sit well with Intel. I expect Sun would try to avoid actions that could
give Intel a cause to sue.
-- Garrett
--
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer
Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division,
General Dynamics C4 Systems
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Phone: 951 325-2134 Fax: 951 325-2191
