Nicolas Cannasse wrote: > My sentence was not about laws in general. It was maybe a little strong > statement so I hope it didn't feel like I'm an anarchist :) I don't call for > civil disobedience either. My rant was just about the fact that since it's > impossible for us (which are not lawyers) to get a definite answer to our > legal questions, and since Macromedia is doing some FUD : we got fear and > doubt on this thread, I was proposing exactly the same as you : that people > must be responsible and act using morality.
Macromedia isn't "doing some FUD" here, the FUD was already here - but generally people were oblivious. Mike is absolutely right in making the points he has made; without that how would we know when we have gone too far, since by your own admission we have no definite answer to our legal questions? > I think it applies quite good to reverse engineering : decompiling a > software to stole some design secrets and make the same is immoral and > illegal, while reverse engineering some file format or protocol in order to > reach interoperability is fun, moral and legal.... at least in the EU (or it > "looks" like). Yes, quite :) It may be morally OK to reverse engineer file formats and protocols for reasons of interoperability, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone appears to be hoping for some unity between Macromedia and the Open Source Flash community - and fighting legal battles with Macromedia, or losing projects after they are stable - isn't the way to achieve unity. Hence why I think it's healthy for these discussions to take place, and for Macromedia to contribute to them - irrespective of whether we like what they have to say. - IE _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
