> It is not a technical issue, but a legal one. > > I don't know if it is legal to ship a QQ client > created by using "reverse engineering". > But I know, in 2006, Tencent filed a copyright > lawsuit against Chen Shoufu (aka Soff), the author of > Coral QQ, whose redistributing modified Tencent QQ > was ruled illegal. > He is sentenced 3 years, fine 1.2 million yuan. > > Ginn >
Hi Ginn, I didn't mean to be rude, I was actually watching the webcast when I made my reply--I am too senile to do multiple tasking. What I meant to say is that the Chen Shoufu case has nothing to do with what Ubuntu is doing (and hopefully OpenSolaris will be able to duplicate or even do better). Chen Shoufu was doing OK when he was writing--and making available for downloading--extensions for Tencent QQ (he was found not guilty on this count). But, as I understand it, Chen Shoufu became impatient (& some say greedy) and began wrapping his extensions around at least some of the QQ code (& replacing the Tencent ads with his own ads), and making the combined package available. This is clearly a copyright violation. As you mentioned, the QQ client has been "reverse engineered" to show the involved protocol. I know we have many software experts here, and you don't have to look at a code to figure out the protocol. Since a copyright protection does not extend to functionality--I am sure we all know this, writing a software implementing the QQ client protocol is not a copyright violation. Actually, there is even a QQ client written in java. :-) However, the open source version of the QQ client is known to have limited features (though it should be good enough for inclusion in OpenSolaris). But as I am sure you are aware, Tencent actually provides QQ clients for various platforms, including Linux. Most Linux distros avoid the proprietary Tencent version, and I was hoping that perhaps we can sweet talk Tencent into writing a Solaris version. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
