Re: [License-discuss] Reverse Engineering and Open Source Licenses

[John Cowan]

thufir scripsit:

 I don't think it's necessary to write a PDF about it, but, still,
 interesting.  IMHO this is bad policy, a bad law, but there you are.
 Did this change at one point?  I thought that reverse engineering
 was found to be legal, at least in the US?  And this Bowers v
 Baystate set a precedent where it could be prohibited!?

Frankly, I have zero sympathy for Baystate's behavior.  Bowers offered to
license his technology on commercial terms, and they told him they thought
they could do it themselves.  They then licensed a copy of his work,
accepting in the process the license's prohibition on reverse engineering,
which they then proceeded to reverse engineer.  When Bowers sued, they
tried to claim that this part of the contract didn't apply to them.
Legally, they could have been right; ethically, their position is
bargain-basement.  Hard cases, as the saying is, make bad law, and now
we're stuck with it.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
But that, he realized, was a foolish thought; as no one knew better than
he that the Wall had no other side.
--Arthur C. Clarke, The Wall of Darkness
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Re: [License-discuss] Reverse Engineering and Open Source Licenses

[thufir]

On 2015-03-07 08:03 AM, John Cowan wrote:

thufir scripsit:


Please consider carefully your usage of requires versus allows.  I
think the language barrier isn't helping, but I see now where you're
coming from, or at least what your concern is.  Again, what is the
mechanism by which *properietary* software *prevents* reverse
engineering?

The terms of the license, to be sure.  Many proprietary licenses require
you to give up the right to reverse engineer the software in order to
obtain the right to use the software at all.  The statement Reverse
engineering is legal is not equivalent to A license requirement not
to reverse engineer is void, any more than the freedom of speech means
that non-disclosure agreements are void.  We can contract out of our
rights to do all sorts of things, and do so daily.




Well, I stand corrected.  The book of knowledge (wikipedia) says:

Reverse engineering of computer software 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software in the US often falls 
under both contract law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_law as a 
breach of contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_contract as 
well as any other relevant laws. This is because most EULA 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EULA's (end user license agreement) 
specifically prohibit it, and U.S. courts have ruled that if such terms 
are present, they override the copyright law which expressly permits it 
(see /Bowers v. Baystate Technologies 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Baystate_Technologies/^[29] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#cite_note-29 ^[30] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#cite_note-30 ).



It was my understanding that contract law couldn't prohibit this. Ok, 
well now I understand the concern :)


I don't think it's necessary to write a PDF about it, but, still, 
interesting.  IMHO this is bad policy, a bad law, but there you are.  
Did this change at one point?  I thought that reverse engineering was 
found to be legal, at least in the US?  And this Bowers v Baystate set a 
precedent where it could be prohibited!?


Not good.

I'd hoped, and believed, that reverse engineering would always be legal, 
provided you jump through the requisite hoops.




-Thufir


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