On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 02:36:16PM -0400, Jean Lucas wrote: > In conclusion, reverse engineering is the only option for support. > Since using this repo to port/construct a new driver would constitute > a derivative work, and stripping licenses is bad, one has to reinvent > the wheel.
Copyright covers specific expressions (implementations) of a work (a driver for this device). Copyright for one driver doesn't cover other implementations of drivers for the same device (the copyright holder would need a patent for that kind of protection). I believe it is OK to use an existing GPL driver as a documentation reference, and write a new driver from scratch based on that information. However, it is clearly not OK to copy any code from the existing driver. Device-specific data such as register offsets are facts, and facts aren't copyrightable, so data contained in the driver can be used. "Porting" the existing driver implies copying code from it. You could try to understand the existing driver, take notes about how it works, and then try to write a better driver for OpenBSD. > Or get realtek to issue a BSD-licensed driver. Or documentation. Nothing beats documentation.
