Re: On Hardware Abstraction Layers
Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:29 pm
Aaaaactually MS would've beaten the sh!t out of the ReactOS developers if it wasn't clean room. And they're not dead yet! 
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On Hardware Abstraction Layers
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Re: On Hardware Abstraction Layers
Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:16 am
I think it has partially to do with microsoft providing the documentation themselves (if software/driver builders can use it, why not the kernel devs? )
)Re: On Hardware Abstraction Layers
Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:43 am
Partially. Also, note that even MS bugs are being reproduced whenever possible. The Windows API documentation (once known as Win32 API + Win64 API, although none of those names are valid anymore) is often incomplete or even wrong. Besides, clean room coding is perfectly legal...
Re: On Hardware Abstraction Layers
Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:49 am
There seems to be some misconception (at least with the first person to bring it up) of what exactly 'clean room reverse engineering' is. Basically, it's having two teams, that have no communication between them whatsoever. The first team is reverse engineering the old way, i.e. disassembling code, and writes a functional specification of the interface. Then the second team gets the specification, and writes code that matches it. This is how (iirc) Compaq reverse engineered the original IBM PC BIOS. I'm not sure whether today's software patent stuff in the US can prevent anyone from duplicating an interface though.
JAL
JAL
Re: On Hardware Abstraction Layers
Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:58 am
Actually, it doesn't really matter who comes up with the specification; it doesn't have to be Microsoft.