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Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report)
The Jem Report has published an article on
the OLPC/NDA issue featuring interviews with a number of people,
including Richard Stallman: "I have never signed an NDA for generally
useful technical information, and I don't want to start now. On the other
hand, I can see how, since it eliminates a greater wrong, it can be
justified in this case. It is an unfortunate example, but it could also
eliminate the problem."
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Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 15:05 UTC (Tue) by elicriffield (guest, #33738) [Link] "OLPC-contracted developers have signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to access Marvell's hardware documentation in order to create a free software replacement for it."
How can you write free (as in rights not price like the artical talks about) software based on infomation you had to sign an NDA to get?
What good is the source if noone else gets to knows the specs anyway?
Eli
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 15:26 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] Good source code makes it clear what's happening all the time and has comments documenting the more obscure things. It is also structured, with a function doing this, and another doing that. So if the driver is written well it's better than the specs, as it doesn't only tell what can be done, but also shows how. See also the previous article, "Device drivers and non-disclosure agreements", good comments there. What's more important than the specs is the ability to communicate constructively with the hardware engineers.
Not all NDAs are the same, and signing one without getting permission to release the driver is just stupid and hopefully never happens, as the whole point is to be able to get a driver. Companies which don't want that won't give the NDA option in the first place. NDAs can also have a limited duration after which all information may be disclosed. If that's something like one or two years then that isn't that bad.
Of course the driver written under NDA must be complete and of reasonable quality, or else it isn't worth much.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 15:37 UTC (Tue) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link] >as it doesn't only tell what can be done, but also shows howWith the added advantage that what the driver says can be done probably works in real life, which may or may not be true of the spec., depending how conscientious the vendor is about documenting errata. Of course, a spec. that provides a decent explanation of the programming model is nice and well worth having. But the value of a well-commented driver that has been shown to work should not be underestimated.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 5:14 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I would imagine that if it's illegal for a person to violate NDA by talking to somebody on IRC chat about how a peice of hardware works then I realy doubt that that same person is going to be able to put a large amount of comments or be especially descriptive with the code either.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 8:51 UTC (Wed) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link] Sure, they can't just drop the whole of the NDA'd document into acomment block and say "well, it's code now", but the result can typically contain meaningful enough names, and enough relevant comments to understand what is going on See for example the driver that this article is about (there's a URL further down among the comments). It's more work to make sense of than a document, but it is likely to match reality more closely. Your argument that there is no sense requiring an NDA and allowing the development of an open source driver from which equivalent information can be extracted is perfectly logical, but that doesn't seem to stop companies.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 15:27 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Whether it's a violation of the NDA depends on the NDA's terms. Pretty much invariably it is true that the NDA in question was only asked for at all on the basis that a free driver would result, so there is no violation.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 16:10 UTC (Tue) by ca9mbu (guest, #11098) [Link] So, what value does the NDA have then, if folks are going to obviously be able to understand how the hardware operates by looking at the source code? Surely it would have been quicker, easier and therefore cheaper to just release the docs and not have to pay lawyers to draw up and sign the NDAs?
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 16:22 UTC (Tue) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link] often the so called "specification" contains a lot of things not relevant to driver writers. It's easier and cheaper to just put those under NDA than to pay a docwriter to completely overhaul a 100 page document... in addition it's sometimes not even entirely clear what info exactly is needed for the driver.
you make it sound "easy" to have a good driver documentation that you can just release. Reality is different often....
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 18:09 UTC (Tue) by ca9mbu (guest, #11098) [Link] Sorry, arjan, I didn't mean to come across as thinking it's "easy" at all. It's hard enough for me to write proper documentation for the code I write. I can't imagine what it is like to have to document hardware, never having been involved in that field. My question obviously shows that lack of experience, I guess. It just seemed ironic that the documentation is only being released under NDA, but being used for software that was obviously going to be made public, hence the information it contained would be disclosed, albeit in a slightly different format.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 9:51 UTC (Wed) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link] Sometimes you end up with things like implementation details of the chips that the vendors don'twant too public mixed in with the documentation on how to program the chip, especially if the manual isn't really intended to become public but the need has come along over time.
You can also find that a vendor with NDAs with other people or with secret information of its own
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 16:28 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] From what I can tell.. the contract that Marvell has with whoever wrote the embedded code OS for them does not allow them to release it unless under NDA. So the lawyers have to get into this.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 23:27 UTC (Tue) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link] It's perfectly feasible - and pretty easy - to write a driver which doesn't give away enough about the hardware to allow someone else to properly modify it.
(I know people that do this, albeit not on purpose. ;-)
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 0:21 UTC (Wed) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] Not on purpose? Take a look at the nv driver for nvidia video cards. It was deliberately obfuscated.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 7:17 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] The statement suggested that he knows people who achieve this via accident or incompetence. That such achievements occur is not contradicted by the fact that deliberate obfuscation also occurs.
Of course deliberate obfuscation occurs, and that is sad.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 13:12 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Deliberate obfuscation occurs even in cases where no NDA is involved: see the vcg graphing tool, for instance (de-obfuscated a few years ago).
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 14:08 UTC (Wed) by jg (subscriber, #17537) [Link] There are some claims, which I judge are more likely correct than not in the case of the NVidia driver, that the author of that driver literally programs that way.
He should enter the obfuscated C contest.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 15:59 UTC (Wed) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] I'm willing to believe that ... but how about looking back in the XFree86 history at when the driver wasn't obfuscated, and at this CHANGELOG entry:
XFree86 3.3.3 (18 November 1998)
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 11, 2006 21:44 UTC (Wed) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] And if you want to see obfuscation at it's finest, take a look at the actual code.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 16, 2006 22:16 UTC (Mon) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] And if you want to see obfuscation at it's finest, take a look at the actual code.And for even more amusement, do a diff against the previous version for any of the files in question. ;-) Greg
Depends. Posted Oct 11, 2006 6:04 UTC (Wed) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link] Typically, I believe people do a "clean-room" version in circumstances like this. In other words, person A signs the NDA for the source code and writes a formal specification of what it does. No code, no exposure of code, just a specification. Person B, who has neither signed the NDA nor seen the source code, then writes a driver based on the specification.This is usually tolerated by companies, as it (a) keeps their intellectual property safe, (b) adds extra customers for the hardware - where the money is anyway, and (c) doesn't expose their code to any meaningful peer-review. This is also usually tolerated by Open Source developers, as the clean-room implementation is (a) unburdened, (b) semantically identical to the original (although not syntactically identical), (c) much more likely to be correct and feature-complete than if a hostile company picks and chooses what to put in a published specification. (I shouldn't need to name names here.) Although not often mentioned as a feature, clean-rooming can lead to cleaner code, as there's less risk of cruft or architectural defects caused by the inevitable failures of communication between hardware and software divisions of a corporation. For this reason alone, ancient and crufty code is almost always better re-engineered by clean-rooming it than attempting to fix.
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 19:07 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] As per Jim Gettys' blog, the driver in question, still in development but already functional, is here:
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report) Posted Oct 10, 2006 21:14 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] The only remaining proprietary software is the firmware running on the embedded wireless card's cpu, and this will be replaced by free software in time.
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