Re: SS20 cg14 help

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> Well, cg14 and SX are different things.  We know enough to make the
>> cg14 useful but not the SX.
> Well, I have files here like "sx.c": [...]
> and "sx_cmem.c": [...]
> All of these are not redistributable.  But they only carry the Sun
> copyright message, not any third party copyright.

Do you have them under NDA?  If not, I think in most jurisdictions it
would be legal for you to study them, deduce an interface spec, write
it up, and release it.  (I suppose it might be even if you are, but it
seems unlikely; that's just the kind of thing NDAs usually forbid.)

Of course, (a) I'm not sure my impression is accurate, and (b) even if
it is, I don't know whether your jurisdiction is one of "most", and (c)
if I were contemplating such a thing, I'd most certainly run the idea
past a lawyer first.  I mention it in case you're interested enough to
consider it worth into the possibility that it's legal where you are.

> Maybe if someone lobbied the right people, Sun might consider
> releasing these files...

That could certainly help.  But, have you read them?  Based on just
what you've said so far, it's possible that they're nothing but glue
layers, with the real smarts in the applications that speak to the
hardware - for example, framebuffer drivers are often like this, with
the code we'd really like to see being in the relevant window system
server.

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