[linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more

[Lee Revell]

On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 11:05 -0800, Florin Andrei wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 01:20 +0100, CK wrote:
>
> > I still don't see the point, the GPL _protects_ their IP rights
> 
> It only protects the source of the driver.
> 
> > if I 
> > was the evil corporation trying to rip off rme I could aswell rip the
> > thing apart and reverse engineer the code and the protocol, might still
> > be cheaper than doing the r&d work. 
> 
> You're close.
> It's most expensive to do your own R&D.
> It's a bit cheaper to reverse engineer the products.
> It's a lot more cheaper to just grab a GPL'd product and learn from it.
> 
> That's why companies are wary of releasing GPL drivers.

They should do what Creative/EMU did for the emu10k1.  Before releasing
the opensource.creative.com drivers (making them among the first big
players to support Linux by releasing GPL'ed drivers for a flagship
product), they patented those aspects of hardware whose operation could
be inferred by studying the open source driver.  Problem solved.

Lee