Razer EULA restriction still valid ?

[Peter Hutterer]

Hi Timothy,

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 03:15:01AM +0200, Timothy Madden wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> About the Razer EULA issue on the Device wiki page:
> 
> 
>        "Razer devices
> 
>    The EULA of the Razer configuration tool prevents us to reverse
>    engineer their protocol. Until we have legal access (or maybe a
>    clean room implementation), we can not support those devices in
>    libratbag."
> 
> 
> Is this still valid please or can this note be removed ?
> 
> I tried to compare the Razer Synapse 3 EULA with the Logitech G HUB EULA for
> example, and they have the same conditions. Is there a particular paragraph
> / note I am missing in the EULA ?

Logitech does provide us (at least the few of us at Red Hat, but also
others) with documentation for the HID++ protocol. Other documentation has
been public for a while too, especially regarding the unified receivers.  To
my knowledge, the hid++ support hasn't been reverse-engineered but rather
implemented to spec.

> Is it possible the EULA for Razer or Logitech was changed since the wikki
> page was written ?

I don't think anyone would've noticed a change so that too is possible.
 
> None of the Razer or Logitech EULA mention anything about reverse
> engineering the protocol, just the software suite. Also there is the
> openrazer/openrazer project on github, that pretty much aims to do the same
> as libratbag.

IANAL but in order to RE you need to install the software and monitor what
each toggle does on the protocol. Then you can implement that. That is, most
probably, in violation of the EULA.

> Can I help or contribute to integrating a Razer mouse that I have ?

A clean-room implementation of the protocol is legal in some jurisdictions,
so you could implement using openrazer as the protocol specification
instead of observing the software suite. again, IANAL, so... *shrug*.

Cheers,
   Peter