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It’s taint. Anyone who looks at it can’t work on a real open source driver because they will have had access to information they’re not supposed to. It won’t b

by MBCook 18d ago

It’s taint. Anyone who looks at it can’t work on a real open source driver because they will have had access to information they’re not supposed to. It won’t be clean room like the stuff Alyssa did.

alightsoul 18d ago
Can't this be used to make a clean room implementation? Have someone write a spec then someone else who is unrelated, implement it from scratch?
- danielheath 18d ago
  "Person A was under NDA, so we got them to pass their knowledge to person B, then had person B do the work - that's clean-room, right?" Judges, as far as I know, do not generally take kindly to such arguments.
  - alightsoul 18d ago
    So what if person a and person b are unrelated and person b found it on their own? There are countries in the global south that never had an industrial revolution and don't speak English and never had factories for export nor made anything in a factory industrially that isn't building material and food and maybe fuel for local consumption so they've never had an IP infringement case
    - danielheath 18d ago
      > what if person a and person b are unrelated and person b found it on their own That's what's referred to as a "clean room implementation" further up the thread. However, this specific thread is about the scenario where an employee has inside knowledge and is passing that knowledge on to the implementer. Legally speaking, a clean room implementation has much better defenses from claims of copyright violation.
      - alightsoul 18d ago
        I mean person b found the work of person a on their own
        danielheath 16d ago
        Person A has failed to secure private material, and person B can hardly claim their implementation is “clean room” if they based it on other work.
  - ndriscoll 18d ago
    Wouldn't B's publication of the information make it by definition no longer a trade secret? It is now public knowledge, regardless of whether the current or former engineers might be liable for the original leak. Any other interpretation would mean trade secrets have essentially infinite protection/NDAs apply to all of humanity.
    - danielheath 18d ago
      > NDAs apply to all of humanity The NDA doesn't apply to people who haven't signed it, but copyright law does. If you know the material you're receiving is under copyright (eg proprietary source code), and you publish work based on that copyright material, the fact that it's now widely available is not an effective defense against claims of copyright violation. Person B in this scenario hasn't violated the NDA, but they could be sued for copyright infringement.
      - Dylan16807 18d ago
        The point of a clean-room implementation is that the only thing passing from A to B is a detailed specification written from scratch, because functional details cannot be copyrighted. Which I think you know, so I don't understand your argument. You said in another comment "However, this specific thread is about the scenario where an employee has inside knowledge and is passing that knowledge on to the implementer." It being proprietary and/or secret information doesn't affect the copyright of the clean-room output. If there's trade secret implications those are worth discussing, but as a separate issue.
        danielheath 16d ago
        Functional details can’t be copyrighted, but once you’ve seen a copyrighted implementation, it’s an argument in court over similarity and function. A clean room implementation by people who haven’t seen the original work means there can be no discussion of copying, which makes it much cheaper and more reliable to fight an infringement claim.
theoreticalmal 18d ago
That’s the most abstract and esoteric argument I’ve ever heard I think
- MBCook 18d ago
  Wasn’t that exactly the legal standard Compaq had to prove when they did a clean room implementation of the IBM BIOS?
- st_goliath 18d ago
  The argument is not esoteric. An Apple employee working on a reverse engineered GPU driver might (intentionally or not) incorporate internal knowledge that they are contractually obligated to keep secret or write an implementation that is too close to proprietary code they had access to, to the point that it could be argued that it is a derived work. This sort of thing has always been a concern for projects that re-implement some existing piece of software, e.g. there were concerns early on during development of the GNU project about people contributing after having been exposed to Unix source code. Similarly, it is an ongoing concern for the Wine project[1], as well as ReactOS. The later even had a code freeze and internal audit in 2006, after allegations came forward that code had been derived from disassembled Windows binaries[2]. [1] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guide... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit
  - tomaskafka 18d ago
    Exactly! That’s why companies create a clone every time they hire someone, put a clone into vat, and upon person quitting, the person is disposed of and the clone is sent to his family to take upon his role, without leaking company’s internal knowledge.
    - mitxela 18d ago
      They still have to prove you did it. In accidental or small leaks they can't prove it. But there have been enough cases of provable IP theft.
deleted 18d ago
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by MBCook 18d ago

alightsoul 18d ago

Can't this be used to make a clean room implementation? Have someone write a spec then someone else who is unrelated, implement it from scratch?

danielheath 18d ago
"Person A was under NDA, so we got them to pass their knowledge to person B, then had person B do the work - that's clean-room, right?" Judges, as far as I know, do not generally take kindly to such arguments.
- alightsoul 18d ago
  So what if person a and person b are unrelated and person b found it on their own? There are countries in the global south that never had an industrial revolution and don't speak English and never had factories for export nor made anything in a factory industrially that isn't building material and food and maybe fuel for local consumption so they've never had an IP infringement case
  - danielheath 18d ago
    > what if person a and person b are unrelated and person b found it on their own That's what's referred to as a "clean room implementation" further up the thread. However, this specific thread is about the scenario where an employee has inside knowledge and is passing that knowledge on to the implementer. Legally speaking, a clean room implementation has much better defenses from claims of copyright violation.
    - alightsoul 18d ago
      I mean person b found the work of person a on their own
      - danielheath 16d ago
        Person A has failed to secure private material, and person B can hardly claim their implementation is “clean room” if they based it on other work.
- ndriscoll 18d ago
  Wouldn't B's publication of the information make it by definition no longer a trade secret? It is now public knowledge, regardless of whether the current or former engineers might be liable for the original leak. Any other interpretation would mean trade secrets have essentially infinite protection/NDAs apply to all of humanity.
  - danielheath 18d ago
    > NDAs apply to all of humanity The NDA doesn't apply to people who haven't signed it, but copyright law does. If you know the material you're receiving is under copyright (eg proprietary source code), and you publish work based on that copyright material, the fact that it's now widely available is not an effective defense against claims of copyright violation. Person B in this scenario hasn't violated the NDA, but they could be sued for copyright infringement.
    - Dylan16807 18d ago
      The point of a clean-room implementation is that the only thing passing from A to B is a detailed specification written from scratch, because functional details cannot be copyrighted. Which I think you know, so I don't understand your argument. You said in another comment "However, this specific thread is about the scenario where an employee has inside knowledge and is passing that knowledge on to the implementer." It being proprietary and/or secret information doesn't affect the copyright of the clean-room output. If there's trade secret implications those are worth discussing, but as a separate issue.
      - danielheath 16d ago
        Functional details can’t be copyrighted, but once you’ve seen a copyrighted implementation, it’s an argument in court over similarity and function. A clean room implementation by people who haven’t seen the original work means there can be no discussion of copying, which makes it much cheaper and more reliable to fight an infringement claim.

theoreticalmal 18d ago

That’s the most abstract and esoteric argument I’ve ever heard I think

MBCook 18d ago
Wasn’t that exactly the legal standard Compaq had to prove when they did a clean room implementation of the IBM BIOS?
st_goliath 18d ago
The argument is not esoteric. An Apple employee working on a reverse engineered GPU driver might (intentionally or not) incorporate internal knowledge that they are contractually obligated to keep secret or write an implementation that is too close to proprietary code they had access to, to the point that it could be argued that it is a derived work. This sort of thing has always been a concern for projects that re-implement some existing piece of software, e.g. there were concerns early on during development of the GNU project about people contributing after having been exposed to Unix source code. Similarly, it is an ongoing concern for the Wine project[1], as well as ReactOS. The later even had a code freeze and internal audit in 2006, after allegations came forward that code had been derived from disassembled Windows binaries[2]. [1] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guide... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit
- tomaskafka 18d ago
  Exactly! That’s why companies create a clone every time they hire someone, put a clone into vat, and upon person quitting, the person is disposed of and the clone is sent to his family to take upon his role, without leaking company’s internal knowledge.
  - mitxela 18d ago
    They still have to prove you did it. In accidental or small leaks they can't prove it. But there have been enough cases of provable IP theft.

deleted 18d ago

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