Suppose you want to reverse-engineer a GPL'd driver whose original documentation is , as usual, missing. Comments are rather scarce and useless. How do you proceed if your goal is to obtain an equivalent working driver not covered by the GPL?
>>2
I know GNU people are retarded enough never to realize it, but suppose I want to make my own source code open, but link it against something GPL-incompatible.
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Anonymous2011-12-11 16:57
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as GPL, is in fact, Stallman/GPL, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Stallman plus GPL.
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Anonymous2011-12-11 17:02
>>2
People actually reverse code to see what it does and compare it the code they've written.
>>1
You just make abstract models of the GPL code and reimplement the code from your models. At the very minimum, I'd do a data flow diagram of the system.
>>7 Just write your code to do the same thing with the hardware, but with different code.
Well that is trivial, considering how I'm rewriting in another language entirely! I'm just afraid it might be considered a ``derivative work''. Though seeing how GNU people customarily do C-to-C rewrites of various non-free to GPL sources, I guess it's fairly legal.