3 ms·

I wonder how it's not a trivial workaround to have a separate, anonymous project with the sole scope of disassembling the code (and thus violating the license),

by j1elo 3y ago

I wonder how it's not a trivial workaround to have a separate, anonymous project with the sole scope of disassembling the code (and thus violating the license), while acting as knowledge source for emulators. This way, emulators wouldn't be violating any license, just using technical details learned from third party sources. The anonymous project itself would be attacked by Nvidia, and in case this succeeded, replicas of the repo would probably pop up quickly and easily. But good luck having a chinese Gitee repo closed for american copyright infringement!

mech422 3y ago
It appears from the comments here that just disassembling the nvidia code would NOT be a violation? it seems that only disassembling to use in a compatibility layer would be ? I believe, this 2 stage/project system was how DeCSS for DVDs worked? Someone cracked it and posted the code, which could them be picked up/used by others as it was 'public knowledge' or some such ??
- AstralStorm 3y ago
  It is already prohibited on copyright grounds. They put the extra clause to "close" some of the reverse engineering provisions not covered.
  - loup-vaillant 3y ago
    Copyright grounds? Copying stuff can violate copyright, but documenting stuff? No no no, you'd need a specific law to prevent disclosing of information. Maybe misappropriation of trade secrets?
  - mech422 3y ago
    I thought in the EU, reversing is (was?) expressly allowed for 'interoperability' - so if someone in EU reversed something and published it...others could then use it as it was 'public knowlege' ?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > It is already prohibited on copyright grounds. What makes you think that?
imtringued 3y ago
Nothing about this prevents you from developing a CUDA conformance test suite that can be used to verify that any given CUDA implementation is functioning properly. Nvidia wouldn't even be allowed to take it down.

by j1elo 3y ago

mech422 3y ago

It appears from the comments here that just disassembling the nvidia code would NOT be a violation? it seems that only disassembling to use in a compatibility layer would be ? I believe, this 2 stage/project system was how DeCSS for DVDs worked? Someone cracked it and posted the code, which could them be picked up/used by others as it was 'public knowledge' or some such ??

AstralStorm 3y ago
It is already prohibited on copyright grounds. They put the extra clause to "close" some of the reverse engineering provisions not covered.
- loup-vaillant 3y ago
  Copyright grounds? Copying stuff can violate copyright, but documenting stuff? No no no, you'd need a specific law to prevent disclosing of information. Maybe misappropriation of trade secrets?
- mech422 3y ago
  I thought in the EU, reversing is (was?) expressly allowed for 'interoperability' - so if someone in EU reversed something and published it...others could then use it as it was 'public knowlege' ?
- justinclift 3y ago
  > It is already prohibited on copyright grounds. What makes you think that?

imtringued 3y ago

Nothing about this prevents you from developing a CUDA conformance test suite that can be used to verify that any given CUDA implementation is functioning properly. Nvidia wouldn't even be allowed to take it down.