Comments initialed with SS below.
________________________________
From: Alexander Wagner <[email protected]>
To: shiv shivaji <[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, November 9, 2009 9:31:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Scid-users] application to convert CB->PGN/SCID
shiv shivaji wrote:
Hi!
> There is a posting on talkchess where Jimmy Mardell reported his findings on
> the CBH internal format at
> http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29468&highlight=cbh
> <http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29468&highlight=cbh>
If you have some time, IMHO the best you can do for the whole community is to
first write a commandline converter for CBH to PGN. Similar: CTG to PGN would
really be a great thing, too, as one could easily use PGN to build a Scid (aka
polyglot) book.
SS: Agreed. Will see if I have time. Same applies to others on this forum :)
> On the legality of this, I have confirmed (my post is on that forum as well),
> that indeed it does appear ok to reverse engineer binary formats for
> interoperability purposes under both the DMCA and EU software laws.
I _think_ it might be ok, however, copyright is a difficult thing. On the other
hand similar things have been done at many occasions in the past without any
legal problems at all. Or did M$ ever publish any of it's .doc or .xls or
whatever specs?
Point is, however, that CB could easily change the format at any time and all
work was in vain. It is kind of unlikely though as they spread the format that
widely that they'd really get some nasty posts from their customers...
(Especially as there is no alternative to CB to read a CB file.)
SS: Yes, its legal as long as the purpose is for interoperability. Hence it was
legal to reverse engineer the word doc format as well.
> Anyway, the format provided should be enough to try to implement it in scid.
I'd suggest not to go that way directly but to do the loop over some easily
portable commandline tool helping other apps as well.
SS: Command line wrapper is good as other projects can use it as well (e.g.
chessx).
> Though, the issue as Jimmy notes is that there is quite a bit of encryption.
This is difficult, indeed. Circumvention of encryption mechanisms is prohibited
by german law, indeed. (This note is, however, not meant to keep you from
implementing the above ;)
SS: It is not really encryption in the standard sense. More like bit flipping
for some piece movements. Doubt German law was thinking about this case. I
suspect they were envisaging someone breaking web authentication to a server.
--
Kind regards, / War is Peace.
| Freedom is Slavery.
Alexander Wagner | Ignorance is Strength.
|
| Theory : G. Orwell, "1984"
/ In practice: USA, since 2001
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