Thank you for the insights everyone! I reached out to the RPi foundation this morning. I tried to reach out to Broadcom but every single form on their website that I tried gave me a submission error, so I'm not sure I'll have any luck there. They don't seem very open-source focused.
My primary motivation for the RPi support is that it's a fully featured board that would attract a lot of student and hobbyist users, and possibly be a gateway for some more contributors. I'm also frustrated by seeing QNX with Pi 4B support while NuttX doesn't have it yet, since they push it heavily in student circles that I'm part of. I know that NuttX can deliver a better product for that audience. Most of the students at my university have received free Pi 4Bs from QNX at events, so I'd like to convert them to NuttX. It will definitely be frustrating if reverse engineering is necessary, but I know it's possible to at least squeeze out a few more features from the device. I definitely won't be spending all of my time on it, just here and there. Matteo On Fri, Aug 29, 2025, 9:24 AM raiden00pl <raiden0...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hardware register layouts, bit meanings, and constants are facts about the > hardware, > not a creative expression by Linux developers. So you can look at Linux > code to > reverse-engineer and understand how the hardware works, even if you don't > release > your code under the GPL. But of course if you can look at non-GPL code, > it's always safer. > > The best approach to reverse engineering when in doubt about copyright is > the "clean-room" approach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design > However, this requires a minimum of two people working on the project. > > I think RPI4 support (especially with ethernet) would be a great addition > to NuttX. > But given my previous experience in embedded reverse engineering - it's a > waste of time. > Projects like these are impossible to estimate and always take more time > (and nerves) > than we would like (and there is no guarantee that it'll succeed). > > czw., 28 sie 2025 o 21:46 Michał Łyszczek <michal.lyszc...@bofc.pl> > napisał(a): > > > On 2025-08-28 16:21:55, Alan C. Assis wrote: > > > We cannot look at the Linux source code, because it is GPL license, but > > we > > > can look at the FreeBSD code: > > https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi > > > > Like who's even gonna prove you've looked at GPL code when implementing > rpi > > support? If you don't copy paste code, but learn protocol and what > > register to > > write in what order noone is gonna do anything. With that logic in mind, > > my last > > project must be turned into GPL because I peeked into Linux kernel how > they > > drive some peripheral. You must have read some GPL code in your life. You > > probably even wrote something *very* similar. Does that make code GPL? > > > > If I was implementing something in Linux for rpi4 does that disqualify me > > from contributing? > > > > Don't blatantly copy-paste code from Linux Kernel, but learn from it and > > implement with your own way. You don't copy code, you learn from it. This > > is > > not copywritable. > > > > If you reverse engineer some secret nvidia gpu, yes, you want to be crazy > > extra > > and just reject anyone that had anything to do with nvidia. But this is > > open source and free code. And you are doing open source and free > software. > > I think it's 100% safe to look at Linux to leare how things work - not to > > steal > > the code. > > >
