Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261194AbVBGQ7J (ORCPT ); Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:59:09 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261195AbVBGQ7J (ORCPT ); Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:59:09 -0500 Received: from alog0147.analogic.com ([208.224.220.162]:7296 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261194AbVBGQ66 (ORCPT ); Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:58:58 -0500 Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:55:31 -0500 (EST) From: linux-os Reply-To: linux-os@analogic.com To: Chris Friesen cc: Lee Revell , Kyle Moffett , Pavel Roskin , Joseph Pingenot , Patrick Mochel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg Kroah-Hartman Subject: Re: Please open sysfs symbols to proprietary modules In-Reply-To: <420791D7.3020408@nortel.com> Message-ID: References: <20050203000917.GA12204@digitasaru.net> <692795D1-758E-11D9-9D77-000393ACC76E@mac.com> <1107674683.3532.26.camel@krustophenia.net> <420791D7.3020408@nortel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3685 Lines: 82 On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, Chris Friesen wrote: > Lee Revell wrote: >> On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 21:50 -0500, Kyle Moffett wrote: >> >>> It's not like somebody will have >>> some innate commercial advantage over you because they have your >>> driver source code. >> >> >> For a hardware vendor that's not a very compelling argument. Especially >> compared to what their IP lawyers are telling them. >> >> Got anything to back it up? > > I have a friend who works for a company that does reverse-engineering of ICs. > Companies hire them to figure out how their competitor's chips work. This is > the real threat to hardware manufacturers, not publishing the chip specs. > > Having driver code gives you the interface to the device. That can be > reverse-engineered from watching bus traces or disassembling binary drivers > (which is how many linux drivers were originally written). Companies have > these kinds of resources. > > If you look at the big chip manufacturers (TI, Maxim, Analog Devices, etc.) > they publish specs on everything. It would be nice if others did the same. > > Chris I also have first-hand knowledge. Once there was a company called Data Precision. Just point your favorite search-engine to that name. They were a wholly owned subsidiary of Analogic. They no longer exist. Data Precision would take a year or more to develop a product. Six weeks after it was available on the market, it would have been cloned by Pacific-rim companies and dumped into the US at below US manufacturing cost. Even Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard had these problems. What they did, to assure survival, was to create custom silicon and hide the inner-workings of everything. You can't even get a schematic anymore. Data Precision used to provide schematics so test equipment could be repaired. This resulted in the death of the division. The world is filthy with thieves. One of Data Precision's products had a 'glitch' in its spectrum analyzer display. This was because of a trade-secret method of performing a FFT that wasn't "exactly" a FFT, but good enough for a screen-display. This allowed fast screen updates (over 100 times per second) so that one could use the analyzer as a RF "sniffer" just like analog spectrum analyzers. Internally, the real FFT was performed so accurate readings could be made once somebody let the machine stabilize. Everything, including the glitch, was copied verbatum. The source-code wasn't made available, but the internal TMS320/C30 DSP was accessible using a IEEE serial port. They just sucked out the binary and used a disassembler to see where I/O was done, then just copied the binary directly. They didn't even need the source-code. The binary from one of the clones was identical to the binary from the original product, simply a copy. So companies that want to stay around for awhile don't devulge anything that will expedite the cloning of their hardware. It is particularly important where name recognition is meaningless. If you have a screen- card in your box that emulates your favorite vendor's screen card, do you care if it's a non-name clone as long as it works? Do you even know if your favorite vendor stole his design from somebody else in the first place? Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.10 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by Dictator Bush. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/