On Friday 29 March 2002 21:31, Marko Karppinen wrote:

> So, the important distinction here is that Emiel wouldn't be gathering
> knowledge "on the workings of an existing work" (the driver), but on
> the hardware he wants to support.

NetBSD already has an AWACS driver, it works somewhat, but hasn't got 
recording capabilities and the volume control sucks, and the fact that the 
driver hasn't been touched in a year. Hence my interest in using some working 
code from a system that's known to operate the hardware well.

> Of course, it is very, very hard to read source code for a program and
> then not be influenced by it when writing a workalike. This is what
> cleanrooming is for; Emiel could find a friend to dig out the
> hardware-specific information and relay it to him. This would at
> least prevent accidental copyright infringement.

I doubt if much of the apple code will survive the 'transition'. The Apple 
driver code is in C++, mine will be in C. NetBSD (and linux too btw) uses one 
driver for all the AWACS types, Darwin uses three. And APSL code can be in 
the NetBSD kernel with relatively few problems.

I'm taking this to the port-macppc@netbsd.org mailing list btw.

> P.S. I haven't followed the issue at all, but one would think that
> there would be proof by now of previously undocumented hardware
> information drifting from Darwin to the LinuxPPC side despite the
> incompatible licenses...

I think Apple would have known that cross-pollination would occured when they 
openend Darwin. But hardware docs should be open to the public anyway.

Cheers,
Emiel
-- 
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
		-- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"