Original post: https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/57239/How-do-projects-like-PINE64-and-Asahi-Linux-write-open-source
How do those projects write open-source drivers for proprietary hardware legally? I know that there’s “clean-room” reverse engineering, but is it really a requirement? From what I understand, you can write docs about how the hardware works and then the other team can write a software based on that documentation.
What if the new software is just implementing the necessities for compatibility and other than that is a different product? Is it still illegal for just one team to do that?
From what I’ve seen, generally it’s assumed that the reverse engineering was done cleanly, unless there’s specific evidence to the contrary (i.e., explicitly copied code, references to leaked codebases, etc.).
This answer on StackOverflow is well-cited and goes into a lot of the US legal precedent surrounding these issues.
All that being said, if you’re profiting off of the work, you’ve entered an entirely different risk matrix.