As I remember it, the pertinent register information here was reverse engineered, so it is at least arguable that I'd be copying fbdev
intellectual property here if I'd extracted and reused it.
Perhaps I was wrong, but my understanding from my days in a software
house taught me that I'd be breaking copyright not just by lifting
lines of code, but also by reading the code and copying intellectual
property, including register information.
I hardly think that pure numerical data like register contents can be subject to copyright anyway. Copyright only covers the very (code) implementation. If your code _does_ the same but though a somewhat different implementation, it might be infringing eventual patents but not copyright.
Besides there are only a few ways of writing code to twiddle a bit in a register - I could easily duplicate a line of code while reconstructing it from the register description, and it would be hard to prove that I didn't just copy the line directly.
If (parts of) the implementation is (are) obvious and carries/y no creative element whatsoever (like setting/clearing a bit in a register), and/or is "the only way", copyright does not apply either. Otherwise no one could write any new driver for any hardware. In simple terms, you can't infringe copyright by "copying" stuff like "a = b" or "setregister(register, value)".
Thomas
-- Thomas Winischhofer Vienna/Austria thomas AT winischhofer DOT net http://www.winischhofer.net/ twini AT xfree86 DOT org _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
