Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>
> 
> > There's absolutely no point even implying that we need their permission
> > to reverse engineer anything,
> 
> If we are going to distribute code that has been derived by reverse
> engineering, then we do need permission from the original copyright
> holder. It's not the "reverse engineering" that needs permission; it's
> the "distribute derived code".

The spec has been reverse engineered.  The code is then created from
the spec.  That seems to break the copyright link enough.  It
certainly seemed to work for Compaq when they reverse engineered the
PC bios.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu