HACKING: Clarify the intent of the license
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HACKING.md
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HACKING.md
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@ -6,6 +6,27 @@ Although the library uses GLib internally, libfprint is designed to provide
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a completely neutral interface to its application users. So, the public
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a completely neutral interface to its application users. So, the public
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APIs should never return GLib data types.
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APIs should never return GLib data types.
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## License clarification
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Although this library's license could allow for shims that hook up into
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proprietary blobs to add driver support for some unsupported devices, the
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intent of the original authors, and of current maintainers of the library,
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was for this license to allow _integration into_ proprietary stacks, not
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_integration of_ proprietary code in the library.
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As such, no code to integrate proprietary drivers will be accepted in libfprint
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upstream. Proprietary drivers would make it impossible to debug problems in
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libfprint, as we wouldn't know what the proprietary driver does behind the
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library's back. The closed source nature of drivers is usually used to hide
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parts of the hardware setup, such as encryption keys, or protocols, in order
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to protect the hardware's integrity. Unfortunately, this is only [security through
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obscurity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity).
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We however encourage potential contributors to take advantage of libfprint's
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source availability to create such shims to make it easier to reverse-engineer
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proprietary drivers in order to create new free software drivers, to the extent
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permitted by local laws.
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## Two-faced-ness
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## Two-faced-ness
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Like any decent library, this one is designed to provide a stable and
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Like any decent library, this one is designed to provide a stable and
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