From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue May  2 14:51:51 1995
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From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@ref.tfs.com>
Message-Id: <199505022150.OAA09297@ref.tfs.com>
Subject: Re: DIGIBOARD driver in ~julian
To: weber@rhrk.uni-kl.de
Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 14:50:33 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To:  <9505022047.aa02277@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de> from "weber@rhrk.uni-kl.de" at May 2, 95 08:47:14 pm
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> Hallo,
> 
> In list.freebsd-hackers you write:
> 
> >Thanks for enlightening this, Terry.  I've really been under the
> >impression that it was beyond legality in US to disassemble some-
> >thing (and i will yet have to check it again -- but it's still my
> >believe for the german situation).
> 
> Kurze Bemerkung: soweit ich weiss enthaelt die Eur. Urheberrechts-Direktive
> spezielle Klauseln die das reverse engineering zum herausfinden von 

Yes, a lot of the big guys called it "The Pirate Directive" for that 
reason.

It's perfectly plain: if you cannot get information about an interface
by other means, you can disassemble code to find the information.

Notice the use of the word "interface", it allows this >ONLY< for interfaces,
and >NOT< for anything else.

Now, $64000 question: what is an interface ?

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@login.dknet.dk> -- TRW Financial Systems, Inc.
'All relevant people are pertinent' && 'All rude people are impertinent'
=> 'no rude people are relevant'