On Wed, 7 Mar 2001 14:13:05 -0500 (EST), barton grantham wrote:
>Isn't this exactly what Compaq did back in the day in order to make
>their first PC compatible? Not sure how the legal landscape has changed
>since then, but I'm pretty sure it was legal at one time.
It is and it isn't.
You have to use a clean-room approach. First, you get some programmers
to disassemble the BIOS. They look over the source code and see
exactly what the code does. They then write a detailed document that
describes exactly what the BIOS does, but without using code. They
then hand it over to another team of programmers.
These programmers have the task of creating code that does exactly what
team #1 told them to do, but without access to the BIOS code. They are
then left with a clean-room BIOS: a BIOS that implementes the code
functionally, but in a different way.
Any programmer who looks at BIOS source code and then writes their own
is open to a lawsuit. The BIOS manufacturers could say that your code
was derived from theirs. It may be true or it may not be, but the
lawsuit would still come. With a clean-room approach, they can't sue
for the same reason. Of course, they could challenge the strength of
keeping your clean-room clean, but that's a different issue.
Tim Massey
