Suggestion: Actively support reverse engineering projects

[Magnus Blomfelt]

Hi,
I have a suggestion about how to actively support
reverse engineering projects.

There are some FOSS drivers in the works that is not yet
suitable for Ubuntu. However helping them along the way might
get us there sooner.

My suggestion is a program that would match the hardware a
user have with the hardware a reverse engineering project
needs information about. If it is a match the program would
ask the user if he/she wants to help the project.

Preferably it should be simple things like taking an automatic
dump of a piece of hardware or a quick test to see if a driver
works.

One example would be to help Nouveau[1] with cards that need
dumping. There is currently 44 up to date dumps, 105 old dumps
and 104 cards still missing. The program could have a great
impact here.
[1] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Another example would be to do a quick test to see if some
wifi or modem driver could retreive something over the net.
For instance "Can you see the picture below?". Answering yes
could send some information to the project and answering no
could also send some info to the project if the user has some
other means of connectivity.

There are some alternatives of when the program should be run:
- Automatically for all new versions of Ubuntu
- Automatically for all betas of Ubuntu
- When the user actively wants to run it.

It would of course be important to communicate with the reverse
engineering teams to make sure they get information they want.

My hope is for someone to pick up this idea and make something
out of it. I think 'revenge' would make for a cute name for a
reverse engineering project, if it's not already taken.

I realize this might not be a new idea, it might already be
implemented or it might be too much for the user to deal with.

Sincerely
Magnus