[ros-dev] RE: What Happened

[Wesley Parish]

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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