free firmware for 88W8388

[Albert Cahalan]

Dan Williams writes:

> No, you can't.  One team reverse engineers the hardware and
> creates a specifications document, the second team implements
> (from scratch or from unencumbered FOSS sources) the firmware

The only "unencumbered FOSS sources" are public domain.
Creating BSD code from GPL code is no different from creating
GPL code from a binary blob. Without the clean-room approach,
the GPL code authors would have an easier time proving that
the BSD code is contaminated. It's not certain that they
would succeed of course, just as it isn't certain that a
binary blob vendor would succeed against a GPL firmware that
was made without a clean-room approach. This is purely a matter
of having a more solid defense if it can be shown that there
was no access to the original.

Any Linux hackers want to sue *BSD hackers?  >:-)

(as always, this is not be be considered legal advice)