On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 10:42, Michael Fritscher wrote:
Allow me to just put it this way, reverse engineering IS illegal, HOWEVER even Microsoft reverse-engingeers stuff that they want to know how it works and to write drivers/etc for, so I still don't see the point of why anyone would have a problem, it's not like ReactOS is the first to utilize reverse-engineering practices to learn something, and secondly I'd like to point out by the information I have studied, ReactOS DOESN'T have Windows source code in it (at least by the current facts, no) it was suspected that so due to a certain crash that looked similar in terms of debugging very identicle to Windows.
-- -David W. Eckert
If I understand correctly, reverse engineering is okay to unterstand how something works (and "speak" each other, i.e. interoperability!), but not copying assembler-code or a direct translation in a higher language like C.
Which should be pressed more firmly on the legal eagles. If reverse engineering is the scientific method applied to engineering problems, what distinguishes it from the scientific method? So that the self-same means and methods are deemed illegal?
Or put in another context, reverse engineering is used in reconstructing an aviation disaster, to take one example. Given that the internals of an aircraft contain some highly company-specific Intellectual Property, would pilots feel safer knowing their aircraft's company's precious IPR is protected from reverse engineering by some such law? That if the plane crashes, nobody'll ever know what happened? If Boeing or Airbus ever took such a ridiculous attitude, they'd be buried in their sleep by all the aircraft companies who haven't got such anti-safety superstitions.
Wesley Parish
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