Talk:Clean room design

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Re: "A famous example is from Compaq who built the first clone of an IBM computer through a clean room implementation of the BIOS."

Are we sure that it was Compaq that did the clean room implementation of the BIOS? Could it have been Ajwad or Phoenix (possibly under contract with Compaq)?

http://steve-parker.org/articles/microsoft/ says:

A company called Ajwad set up a team, and showed them IBM's source code to the BIOS (these people, having seen IBM's code, could not now write their own BIOS). This team then wrote up, from IBM's source code, a detailed functinal specification, stating exactly what an IBM-compatible BIOS would be required to do. A second team, who had never seen IBM's code, and were therefore under no obligation to IBM's agreement, took this document created by the first team, and wrote their clone. This cost around $1m at the time, because they not only had to do the work, they had to ensure that it was fully and provably documented that they had strictly followed this "clean room" method, and therefore not broken the agreement with IBM.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~matrix/intro.html says:

The clone manufacturers were forced to develop their own BIOS in a socalled 'clean room' situation. The first company to successfully develop their own BIOS was Compaq Computer Corp. And it is said that a company called Phoenix Software Associates in Norwood has been involved with the development of this BIOS.

[edit] infringement

Clean room design is useful as a defense against infringement because it relies on independent invention. Because independent invention is not a defense against patents, clean room designs typically cannot be used to circumvent patent restrictions.

is it useful or not?

Yes, it's useful against infringement on intellectual property, in particular copyright and trade secrets. It's no good against patents, but they are only one kind of IP. There's no contradiction here. 82.92.119.11 23:34, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Ţĥëņ ǐţ ηëëďś ţō ßë çĺáŕífïëď.

Why? When one refers to "infringement" one generally means copyright and trade secrets. Have you ever heard anyone say "patent infringement"? I've always heard it referred to as "patent violation". -- Toksyuryel ^{talk | contrib} 02:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)