Mateusz Berezecki [off-list ref] writes:

The driver is not yet fully working because I didn't finish kernel
integration yet. Almost all
driver I/O ops are reverse engineered independently of openbsd openhal
which is missing just too much.


Ok, enough talking. Most of the atheros 5212 hal is now open :)

This is great news. An open source Atheros driver which could be
included to Linux is really needed.

But how was the reverse engineering done? I noticed that forcedeth
driver was implemented using the clean room design[1] and Linux
Broadcom 4301 driver project[2] seems to be using the same method.

The reason I'm asking this is that I just wouldn't want see the same
happening this with this driver as happened during reverse engineering
of pwc Philips Webcam driver (some parts of the driver were removed
from kernel, but I believe the situation is now solved).

Actually, what are requirements to get a reverse engineered driver
included to Linux? Is clean room design an absolute must? It seems
that reverse engineering is needed if we want Linux support for most
of the WLAN cards on the market :(

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
[2] http://linux-bcom4301.sourceforge.net/go/progress

-- 
Kalle Valo