Reverse engineering.
USA states clear rules.
A person who pulls appear the code cannot take part in creating the new code or device. Ie Document how it work.
This rule does not change where ever you are.
Reverse engineering cases have been fort and lost in most countries because developer not been able that they did not copy X section of code directly from what they were Reverse engineering. Ie since the code matched close enough it was pick since they had seen inside the program they copied and then tried to hide it. USA method prevents this. The coder never saw inside the program so it must be a fluke.
Legal or not is not the issue it if you can prove that you have not breached copyright in a court of law.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Has never been tested in a court of law. Australian Government had something simpler for about two months since then fair use clauses have been added allowing reverse engineering and other methods of bypass with restrictions of course you cannot set out with the reason bar to break DRM but setting out to bypass to allow legal backups or for compatibility is fine or to bypass some other forms of stupidity. Ie region codes fall into stupidity. I by a legal copy of something bring it home then cannot play it that is stupidity. DRM is not allowed to create trade barriers if so it illegal so completely open to attack.
Simple example provide it.
Completely Open Source Player. Linux kernel ... Only part closed kinda was a public key.
The license on the key was a killer. [quote] You here by agree to use only approved software on any machine that is use with this public key. No existing or third party data allowed on the playing device along with the public key except for approved software and file created by approved software as part of approved software operation. [/quote] Now a pirate that does not care about the license does not have to format their computer to watch the video. Law abiding person has to.
Note approved software only contains a player not a converter. Pirate is free do what they like and law abiding is hurt majorly. The addon's in Australia would allow above to be got around legally.
Just give this to your government. They realize there is a flaw in the DMCA and its not friendly.
We have a mess. Fighting over what rules apply here apply there solve nothing. Laws that have not been to court may or may not hold.
Lets take a really good look at the source tree. -Insert new version of externally source sections. Leave documentation so next update of this section is simpler. Note my Zlib patch posted to ros-dev is a requirement 1.1.4 has known security problems. Most likely there are more. -Locate sections that need documentation written. Rbuild is one of these things that needs documentation for new developers. It confused the heck out of me. I am not a documentation writer. I woffle to much and suffer from dislexer so sometime documentation I can read no one else can(yes it can pass a grammar and spell checker). -Find features that external libs need added to improve them inside Reactos to produce a better Reactos. Mesa could do with a opengl version change option. Ie no hardware accel and low processor user drop it back to version 1.2 opengl. Ie adjustable 1.2 takes a lot less process to render than 1.5.
Developers could work on adding these features while main tree is completing audit. Developers with nothing to do get upset.
I guess most of the developers in Reactos that this first time they have had to handle a Audit. Key to handling a Audit effectively is not to remain frozen at the same point in time. But to move forward in the process of Auditing. If have access to external developers get them working on parts that will be required in future as soon as able normally requiring feature requests.
Peter Dolding
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Peter Dolding