Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by taneliv 659 days ago
Exactly like you are saying, if I'm not misunderstanding the situation: the code is unlicensed for anyone who is not AMD. That is incompatible with GPL2 license of the kernel. Without HDMI Forum's approval it can not be licensed, either, since the point is that AMD does not own the secrets contained within.

(If the driver is leaked, I would imagine it to be illegal to distribute it. Companies might elect to not actively support even the fallback mechanism, if it has no other use cases. Probably not a big hurdle and something an installation package should be able to solve, but a hurdle nevertheless.)
1 comments
shiroiushi 658 days ago
>(If the driver is leaked, I would imagine it to be illegal to distribute it.

How so? This would be a 1st Amendment issue: you can't ban free speech. They tried this with deCSS, which could be printed out on a T-shirt. Of course, if it were leaked, it could be called a copyright issue, but copyright claims require the copyright holder to actively pursue those claims: if AMD didn't bother to pursue any claims, then what could anyone do about it?

link
taneliv 658 days ago
I understood the copyright on those secrets was owned by HDMI Forum. AMD would own the copyright on the rest of the driver, supposedly.
link
shiroiushi 658 days ago
You can't assert a copyright on a secret[1]. That's called a "trade secret", and those have no IP protection other than being able to sue the leaker if the secret gets out. You can't copyright facts, so implementing these "secrets" in computer code doesn't confer any kind of protection: the resulting code simply has regular copyright protection.

[1] Well, you can, but that just means other people can't copy it in its original form. AMD had authorized copies so they could write the code. The resulting code is not a copy of the secret document, it just uses facts from that document, and you can't copyright facts.

Similarly, if someone inside Coca-Cola shows you their master copy of the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, and you then write down a list of the ingredients and quantities and publish that on your blog, Coca-Cola can do nothing to you.

link