James Hunkins wrote: > One caution about reverse engineering; while it may be legal to do, > it is illegal to use 'borrowed' code in other code that you might > release or resell without permission.
Of course, this is simple copyright stuff. This is also the reason why companies usually do "clean-room" type reverse-engineering. This means that there are 2 teams, one which does the RE of the competition code and one which does the re-implementation. The first team just gives the second team the specification for the code, the second team thus is not "tainted" in any way by the original code. Most famous for this type of technique was the re-implementation of the first PC IBM BIOS. By Compaq, I think. > In some cases this might also include a method of doing something > (IE: software patents). Fortunately enough software patents are still an US problem only (mostly, the EU patent office regularly tries to grant sort-of software patents, but they are basically unenforceable in most countries). Though the industry is lobbying hard in Brussels to change this fact, but the last advance was actually put down by the European Parliament. For once they did their job. Marcel _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
