From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Dec 23 23: 8:13 2000 From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Dec 23 23:08:11 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from homer.softweyr.com (bsdconspiracy.net [208.187.122.220]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED5A137B400 for ; Sat, 23 Dec 2000 23:08:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=softweyr.com ident=Fools trust ident!) by homer.softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 14A5Ko-0000ZM-00; Sun, 24 Dec 2000 00:12:46 -0700 Sender: wes@FreeBSD.ORG Message-ID: <3A45A1EE.30138FDE@softweyr.com> Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 00:12:46 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Marco van de Voort Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT References: <20001222084324.181F596EC@toad.stack.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Marco van de Voort wrote: > > [Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...] > > > Trouble is there is no consistency in the rulings. > > > > United States Code Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201 Subsection (f) > > > > My basic interpretation of this is, if you legally own a copy of the > > software (firmware is software), you can legally reverse engineer the > > software for the purpose of achiving interoperability. Therefore, if you > > own a piece of hardware, and you have no driver for the hardware, or the > > driver provided is not acceptable, you have the right to reverse engineer > > the firmware in order to write your own driver, thereby achiving > > interoperability. > > Exactly the same in Europe, only the sharing parts are new for me. > The difference seems to be: > The problem is that in the US, it is legal to override this with the > licensing conditions. In Europe this right is inalienable. No, it's not legal to override this with licensing conditions, but software companies keep trying to do so. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message