Hi,
On 12/1/05, Ge van Geldorp gvg@reactos.org wrote:
I don't have a problem with reverse engineering per se, but what we fail to do at the moment is use the information obtained from that in a clean room manner. I.e. at the moment the same person that looks at the object code also provides the ReactOS implementation. I think that's dangerous, I believe most (court) cases where reverse engineering was found acceptable were clean room cases. So I'd like to amend the IP policy with something like:
If there is no other option than to reverse engineer/disassemble object code, the person who reverse engineered the code shall put his findings in a document describing the interface. That person can not implement the corresponding code in ReactOS, implementation shall be done by a different person (or group of persons), working only from the interface description.
We can then keep the document in svn so we can present an audit trail if asked to produce one.
Ok can we start a vote on this? We also need to hold a vote for accepting the IP policy so I still think we should have something like
[] - Accept the IP Policy as it stands [] - Accept the IP Policy with Amendment [] - Discuss IP Policy further
If no choice gets more than 50% of a vote then we should remove option that got the lowest number of votes.
-- Steven Edwards - ReactOS and Wine developer
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo