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The Linux driver in this case is ISC licensed. There’s no legal or ethical problem in porting it. This is open source working as intended. I feel like the jury
by josephg 8mo ago
The Linux driver in this case is ISC licensed. There’s no legal or ethical problem in porting it. This is open source working as intended.
I feel like the jury is still out on whether this is acceptable for GPL code. Suppose you get agent 1 to make a clear and detailed specification from reading copyrighted code (or from reverse engineering). Then get agent 2 to implement a new driver using the specification. Is there anything wrong with that?
- Barbing 8mo ago>anything wrong with that? Wonder if the courts will move fast enough to generally matter.
- josephg 8mo agoAs I understand it, reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is allowed under the law. The only thing subject to copyright is your code. So long as a separate implementation (made by an AI model or made by hand) doesn't use any of your actual code, you have no claim over it. Only the code is yours. AI models make the process of reversing and reimplementing drivers much cheaper. I don't understand the problem with that - it sounds like a glorious future to me. Making drivers cheaper and easier to write should mean more operating systems, with more higher quality drivers. I can't wait for asahi linux to support Apple's newer hardware. I'm also looking forward to better linux and freebsd drivers. And more hobbyist operating systems able to fully take advantage of modern computing hardware. I don't see any downside.
- skydhash 8mo agoDrivers are usually easy to implement. What’s usually lacking is the specifications of the hardware. A lot of devices are similar enough that you can reuse a lot of existing code, but you do want to know which registers to read or fill.